Evaluation of pre/post-fire differenced spectral indices for assessing burn severity in a Mediterranean environment with landsat thematic mapper

In this study several pre/post-fire differenced spectral indices for assessing burn severity in a Mediterranean environment are evaluated. GeoCBI (Geo Composite Burn Index) field data of burn severity were correlated with remotely sensed measures, based on the NBR (Normalized Burn Ratio), the NDMI (Normalized Difference Moisture Index) and the NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). In addition, the strength of the correlation was evaluated for specific fuel types and the influence of the regression model type is pointed out. The NBR was the best remotely sensed index for assessing burn severity, followed by the NDMI and the NDVI. For this case study of the 2007 Peloponnese fires, results show that the GeoCBI-dNBR (differenced NBR) approach yields a moderate-high R(2) = 0.65. Absolute indices outperformed their relative equivalents, which accounted for pre-fire vegetation state. The GeoCBI-dNBR relationship was stronger for forested ecotypes than for shrub lands. The relationship between the field data and the dNBR and dNDMI (differenced NDMI) was nonlinear, while the GeoCBI-dNDVI (differenced NDVI) relationship appeared linear

From Citizen to Cytizen. How to Escape from Cyberstates?

The Modern Western state is characterized by unmediated individual access to wellness, health, safety and liberal human rights. The Newtonian conception of space and time makes formal room for a discursive public area with the citizen and the public institutes in the margin, while participation and ethical responsibility is a prejudice of good citizenship. It is a necessary condition of consistency and coherence of the nation. To date, global migration and multiculturalism threaten those necessary basic conditions of Western states´ political equilibrium. To challenge the actual global phenomena national states transform into virtual places of fear dominated by cybernetics, digital bureaucracy while citizen’s identity is mirrored by the efficiency and unisexual beauty ideal of cyborgs. The substantive conception of technology is government’s tool box to realize the cyberstate while citizen reduce to “cytizen”.In order to escape from this global grey, we propose a different conception of space and time namely the Leibnizian conception of pluralistic independent participating worlds. Moreover, we modify Leopold’s Land-Ethics by introducing the transpersonal identification claim of Warwick Fox inside the common Land so-called eco-homeland while the care for the foreigner serves as paradigmatic core attitude to all participants of the eco-homeland. So we constitute a common eco-refuge, similar to the ideas of Bookchin´s eco- anarchistic ideas but avoiding his dialectic ideal conception of the Land and its participants

Eco-refuges as Anarchist’s Promised Land or the End of Dialectical Anarchism

Since the early Medieval Time people contested theological legitimation and rational discursive discours on authority as well as retreated to refuges to escape from any secular or ecclesiastical authority. Modern attempts formulated rational legitimation of authority in several ways: pragmatic authority by Monteigne, Bodin and Hobbes, or the contract authority of Locke and Rousseou. However, Enlightened Anarchism, first formulated in 1793 by the English philosopher William Godwin fulminated against all rational restrictions of human freedom and self-determination. However, we do not analyze anarchism by the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but by looking for the best actual approach of Anarchist’s ‘Promised Land’. Furthermore, we follow the footsteps of Thoreau’s Walden Pond experiment considered as a place of salvation and prototype of 19th century romantic’s extreme individualism towards Leopold’s ethics of the land. Indeed, Thoreau’s and later Muir’s concepts of refuges are tightly connected to territorial and temporal bio-regional constraints and imply an internally organized public area based on mutualism and Hannah Arendt’s agape. From these ideas of refuges, Aldo Leopold formulated his Land-ethics that claimed integrity and autonomy of the ‘Land’. His foundation is a prototype of the eco-centric free space version of eco-anarchism as formulated by Bookchin. In order to formulate a philosophical foundation of eco-anarchism we reject Newtonian homogeneous space-temporal conception, preceding the whole Modern discours about authority and state. On the contrary, we adopt the pluralistic Leibnizian space-time from which thinking-humans do not dissociate themselves, but participate as part of the rational infrastructure of eco-refuges. In eco-refuges, citizen belong to the civil society that stays in equilibrium with the landscape and all forms of biological life. Space is the boundary condition of human activity and determines how borders, environmental organization and institutes are sustained. Space has its proper essence of sustainability, unity and integrity. The individual feelings of security are embedded in a timelike tradition and evolution of the free space, while individual particular conceptions of space and time integrate into the social processes of identification with the refuge. Therefore, the creation of eco-refuges transforms the actual world of national authorities into a world of anarchistic democratic eco-regional homelands

Assessment of post-fire changes in land surface temperature and surface albedo, and their relation with fire-burn severity using multitemporal MODIS imagery

This study evaluates the effects of the large 2007 Peloponnese (Greece) wildfires on changes in broadband surface albedo (a), daytime land surface temperature (LSTd) and night-time LST (LSTn) using a 2-year post-fire time series of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite data. In addition, it assesses the potential of remotely sensed a and LST as indicators for fire-burn severity. Immediately after the fire event, mean a dropped up to 0.039 (standard deviation = 0.012) (P < 0.001), mean LSTd increased up to 8.4 (3.0) K (P < 0.001), and mean LSTn decreased up to -1.2 (1.5) K (P < 0.001) for high-severity plots (P < 0.001). After this initial alteration, fire-induced changes become clearly smaller and seasonality starts governing the a and LST time series. Compared with the fire-induced changes in a and LST, the post-fire NDVI drop was more persistent in time. This temporal constraint restricts the utility of remotely sensed a and LST as indicators for fire-burn severity. For the times when changes in a and LST were significant, the magnitude of changes was related to fire-burn severity, revealing the importance of vegetation as a regulator of land surface energy fluxes