Quantifying Wildfire Dynamics Through Spatio-Temporal Clustering and Remote Sensing Metrics: The 2023 Quebec Case Study


Urfalı T., EYMEN A.

Fire, cilt.8, sa.8, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 8 Sayı: 8
  • Basım Tarihi: 2025
  • Doi Numarası: 10.3390/fire8080308
  • Dergi Adı: Fire
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, BIOSIS, Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: wildfire dynamics, ST-DBSCAN, GIS, remote sensing, GPR
  • Erciyes Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Wildfires have become increasingly frequent and destructive environmental hazards, especially in boreal ecosystems facing prolonged droughts and temperature extremes. This study presents an integrated spatio-temporal framework that combines Spatio-Temporal Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (ST-DBSCAN), Fire Radiative Power (FRP), and the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (ΔNBR) to characterize the dynamics and ecological impacts of large-scale wildfires, using the extreme 2023 Quebec fire season as a case study. The analysis of 80,228 VIIRS fire detections resulted in 19 distinct clusters across four fire zones. Validation against the National Burned Area Composite (NBAC) showed high spatial agreement in densely burned areas, with Intersection over Union (IoU) scores reaching 62.6%. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) revealed significant non-linear relationships between FRP and key fire behavior metrics. Higher mean FRP was associated with both longer durations and greater burn severity. While FRP was also linked to faster spread rates, this relationship varied by zone. Notably, Fire Zone 2 exhibited the most severe ecological impact, with 83.8% of the area classified as high-severity burn. These findings demonstrate the value of integrating spatial clustering, radiative intensity, and post-fire vegetation damage into a unified analytical framework. Unlike traditional methods, this approach enables scalable, hypothesis-driven assessment of fire behavior, supporting improved fire management, ecosystem recovery planning, and climate resilience efforts in fire-prone regions.