ABoVE: Distribution Maps of Wildland Fire Fuel Components across Alaskan Tundra, 2015

The three fuel components include woody (evergreen and deciduous shrubs), herbaceous (sedges and grasses), and nonvascular species (mosses and lichens). Multi-seasonal and multispectral mosaics were first developed at 30 m resolution using Landsat 8 surface reflectance data collected from 2013 to 2017.

The spectral information from Landsat mosaics was combined with field observations from representative tundra vegetation plots collected during multiple field trips to model the fractional cover of fuel type components. An improved vegetation mask for shrub and graminoid-dominated tundra was developed using random forest classification and is also included. The final fractional cover maps were developed using the trained model with the multi-seasonal and multi-spectral Landsat mosaics across the entire Alaskan tundra.