Determining the Impact of 2021 Gonfaron’s fire on the Plaine des Maures

National Natural Reserve.

The “Plaine des Maures National Natural Reserve” located south east of France contains an
exceptional biodiversity in the Mediterranean region. The diversity of natural habitats in mosaic
(oaks, pine forests, lawns, temporary ponds, maquis, sandstone slabs, meadows...) constitute
favorable environments for a large number of remarkable and even threatened heritage species.

In 2021 the Natural Reserve was hit by the most severe fire of that year in France, more than half of
the Reserve was burned. This project aims to determine the severity of the fire impact on the
Plaine des Maures natural reserve’s vegetation, delivering useful information to guide managing
actions directed toward the recovery process of the natural reserve vegetation. This same analysis
could then be reproduced for the following years to monitor vegetation recovery.

Using the Burn severity metric which is largely based on loss of organic matter in the soil and
aboveground organic matter conversion to ash (e.g. Keeley, J.E. 2009). This analysis will use
differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) which will be classified into 5 severity level as defined by
Key & Benson (2006).

A vector layer of the fire boundaries will need to be extracted. An image classification of the burned
zone will be performed to obtain that layer.

Three Sentinel 2 satellite imagery will be used for this analysis :

- Pre-Fire
- Post Fire
- 1 year Post Fire

Mediterranean vegetation is known for its important and highly flammable fuel loads that are highly
fire-prone (e.g. Keeley, J.E. 2013). For that reason, I expect to see an important surface with
moderate to high burn intensity, however factor like wind, ground type, or vegetation type or
precautionary measure can also affect how an area is affected by fire.