NDVI Analysis of Australian Bushfires with Cloud Computing

Year 2020, Volume: 1 Issue: 2, 78 - 84, 30.09.2020

Nusret Demir

Abstract

Our planet is constantly exposed to massive forest fires, which threaten the natural ecosystem. Determining damages of forest fires has been a subject of extensive research for many years. Remote sensing is one of the effective technologies used for monitoring forest fires. However, accessing and processing data are both costly and time consuming. Therefore, the use of cloud technologies for this purpose is beneficial for rapid response. Australia experienced a series of wildfires from June 2019 to February 2020. These fires are considered as one of the biggest disasters of our age. In our study, Landsat data was used to track the trend of fires across the entire timeline during forest fire events. The Google cloud platform Google Earth Engine was used to obtain the results. Landsat 8 images were processed for each month from June 2019 to March 2020. Landsat 5 images were used to eliminate the clouds. Thus, from June-2019 to March-2020, all images were processed and the damaged areas were determined by NDVI and vegetation analysis. The forest cover reference data of previous years were used for the NDVI threshold value in the study.

Keywords

Remote sensing, Forest fire, Google Earth Engine

Bulut Tabanlı Hesaplama ile Avustralya Orman Yangınlarının NDVI Analizi

Abstract

Gezegenimiz sürekli olarak büyük orman yangınlarına maruz kalmakta ve bu da doğal ekosistemi tehdit etmektedir. Orman yangınlarının zararlarının belirlenmesi uzun yıllardır geniş bir araştırma konusu olmuştur. Uzaktan algılama, orman yangınlarını izlemek için etkili teknolojilerden biridir. Fakat veriye ulaşma, işleme hem maliyetli hem de zaman alıcı işlemlerdir. Bu yüzden bulut teknolojilerinin bu amaçla kullanımı hızlı müdahale için faydalı olmaktadır. Avustralya, Haziran 2019'dan Şubat 2020'ye kadar bir dizi orman yangını yaşamıştır. Bu yangın dizisi çağımızın en büyük felaketlerinden birisi olarak gösterilmektedir. Çalışmamızda, orman yangını olayları sırasında tüm zaman çizgisi boyunca yangının eğilimini izlemek için Landsat verileri kullanılmıştır. Sonuçları elde etmek için Google bulut platformu Google Earth Engine kullanılmıştır. Haziran 2019'dan Mart 2020'ye kadar olan görüntüler her ay için Landsat 8 TOA görüntüleri işlenmiştir. Bulutların elemine edilmesi için de Landsat 5 görüntülerinden faydalanılmıştır. Böylece, Haziran-2019'dan Mart-2020'ye kadar tüm görüntüler işlenerek NDVI ve bitki örtüsü analizi ile hasar gören bölgeler belirlenmiştir. Çalışmada NDVI eşik değeri için geçmiş yıllara ait orman örtüsü referans verisi kullanılmıştır.

Keywords

Uzaktan algılama, Orman yangını, Google Earth Engine

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