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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Relationships between climatic parameters and forest vegetation: application to burned area in Alicante (Spain)

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Abstract The main aims of this study is to examine the variability of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) on forest vegetation in Alicante (Spain) between 1984 and 1994 and to analyse the influence of climatic parameters in the regeneration of forest areas burned by fires. The zone of study is located between XUTM (m) 730400-760400 and YUTM (m) 4274000-4304000 and is characterised by a great topographic complexity that leads to diverse microclimatic conditions. In this area, the maximum annual rainfall of the Valencian Community is recorded, reaching 850 mm of average annual rainfall ( Belda, 1997 ). We examined the spatial and temporal analyse of rainfall and soil moisture over this area. To do this, we analysed the water balances of 25 meteorological stations from the Spanish Meteorological Institute, and we used the Kriging method for their interpolation. On the other hand, to perform multitemporal variation of the amount of vegetation, we have several Landsat TM images from 1984 to 1994 (bands 3 and 4) to calculate the NDVI. The image processing consisted of geometric and radiometric correction (atmospheric and topographic) to superimpose all the images and to make their multitemporal comparison possible. Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to monitor forest vegetation and its relationship with climatic parameters (rainfall and soil moisture), particularly IDRISI, where we integrated information from remote sensing and ground data collection. Finally, it appears that NDVI is useful in estimating the variation of amount of vegetation for a long period. In spatial and temporal analyse, the oscillation of the NDVI was low. In general, the wet area had higher values than the dry area. In the burned area, the regeneration followed an exponential curve which was stronger in wet zones and had high correlation coefficients.