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Satellite in Space

Remote Sensing Projects

These projects apply satellite imagery, remote sensing, and raster analysis
to investigate environmental change across space and time. Using multispectral imagery, vegetation indices, and cloud-based geospatial processing, they examine ecosystem health, wildfire impacts, land cover dynamics, and landscape recovery
to support environmental planning and natural resource management.

Vegetation Recovery Following the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfire

Remote Sensing Analysis of Burn Severity & Vegetation Recovery

Analyzed vegetation recovery following the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire using Landsat 8 satellite imagery in Google Earth Engine. Applied the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) to classify burn severity and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to quantify vegetation recovery between 2015 and 2025. Integrated raster analysis, temporal analysis, and zonal statistics to evaluate recovery patterns across burn severity classes and produce decision-support maps, charts, and animations supporting wildfire ecology, forest management, and post-fire landscape assessment.

 

Software: Google Earth Engine

Remote Sensing & Raster Analysis: Landsat 8 Surface Reflectance, NDVI, dNBR, Multispectral Image Processing, Temporal Analysis, Raster Analysis, Burn Severity Classification, and Zonal Statistics

Environmental Applications: Wildfire Ecology, Vegetation Recovery Analysis, Forest Monitoring, Landscape Change Detection, and Natural Resource Management

Cartography & Visualization: Cartography, Data Visualization, Scientific Communication, and Time-Series Animation

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Research Question: How did burn severity during the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire influence vegetation recovery between 2016 and 2025?

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Key Findings

  • Higher burn severity caused greater initial vegetation loss and significantly slower vegetation recovery.

  • Unburned and low-severity areas exhibited relatively high NDVI values shortly after the fire and recovered rapidly toward pre-fire conditions.

  • Moderate- and high-severity burn areas recovered more slowly, with NDVI values remaining well below those of unburned areas through 2025.

  • Approximately 53.7% of the study area experienced forest loss following the 2016 wildfire, demonstrating the large spatial extent of disturbance.

  • Overall, the analysis showed that burn severity was the primary factor influencing long-term vegetation recovery, with higher-severity areas exhibiting slower and less complete recovery over time.

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