Study Objective¶
The 2011 Las Conchas fire near Las Alamos, NM covered over 150,000 acres of the forest in the Jemez mountains and at the time was the largest wildfire recorded in New Mexico history. It cost the state $41 million to suppress and burned countless Pueblo archeological sites. In the months afterwards, monsoon rains triggered a large amount of flooding and debris flows from the area. This study seeks to quantify vegetation regrowth in the years following the event by using NDVI data taken by the MODIS sensor on NASA Aqua satellite. The difference in NDVI from before and after the event will be calculated and presented on a map with te fire boundary, and a historical graph of the mean peak NDVI of the area during the summer months will be displayed to represent the rate of regrowth following the event.
Site Description¶
The even took place in the Jemez wilderness adjacent to Valles Caldera and the Pajarito fault. The Jemez mountains are heavily wooded and home to a diverse array of plants and wildlife, and contain several ancient stone dwellings once inhabited by the ancestral Pueblo peoples. The area of study sits on an elevated mesa adjacent to a series of washes and alluvials fans that feed into the Rio Grande basin.
Data Description¶
Fire boundary data was taken via infrared heat measuremnt and stored as a polygon vector shapefile and retrieved via the Historic Fire Perimter Database API maintained by the National Interagency Fire Center. The NDVI data was acquired from an API request the Earthdata repository and taken by the MODIS sensor of NASA's Aqua saellite during the summer months from 2010 to 2016.
Data Citation¶
NASA. 2010-2016. MODIS 16-Day 250 m NDVI Summer Composite, Version 1. NASA EOSDIS Land Processes DAAC, Retrieved October 6th, 2023. National Interagency Fire Center. 2011. Wildfire Historical Perimeter 2011. Las Conchas, NM. Retrieved October 6th, 2023.
Large negative difference in NDVI during fireyear 2011¶
We see that within the fire boundary, large areas show a significant drop in NDVI in the year corresponding with the Las Conchas fire.
Recovery very staggered after 2011 Las Conchas fire¶
The 2011 fire a large burn scar in the forest of the Jemez wilderness which remains to this day. While much of the area surrounding Valles Caldrea and the Jemez Mountains is very lush and wooded, espeically for New Mexico, this area has seen slow recuperation. A lot of this is because the dead trunks of many of the trees remain and make it difficult for new saplings to take root in the area. In addition, New Mexico has beeen in a severe drought for several years, and the lack of rainfall has made it difficult for new plantlife to emerge. In addition, the summers have been getting hotter each year, stressing new saplings even more.