Estimation of leaf water status to monitor the risk of forest fires by using remotely sensed data

Estimating the water status of vegetation is one of the most important elements in assessing forest fire danger. In this paper, laboratory measurement confirmed a relationship between leaf water status and the normalized difference water index (NDWI), derived from near-infrared and shortwave-infrared spectral data. Two results were confirmed: (a) NDWI is related to equivalent water thickness, and, (b) in addition to NDWI, the quantity of leaf material must be known in order to estimate vegetation dryness. Based on these findings, the authors developed a vegetation dryness index (VDI) to estimate global vegetation water content. VDI values, calculated by using SPOT/VEGETATION data, were applied to data from a 1998 forest fire in the Russian Far East. This led to two results: (a) VDI was useful for detecting areas with a high potential for ignition, and (b) VDI may have been able to detect the fire-spread direction.