LAND COVER CHANGE DETECTION USING LANDSAT TM

IMAGERY OF THE 2009 VICTORIAN BUSHFIRES

Li Guo1,a, Linlin Ge1,b and Xiaojing Li1,c

1
Geodesy and Earth Observing Systems Group (GEOS)
School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems (SSIS)
University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Phone: +61 2 9385 4201
Fax: +61 2 9313 7493
Email: anngoodluck2008@gmail.com; bl.ge@unsw.edu.au; cxj.li@unsw.edu.au
a

Abstract
The 2009 Victorian bushfires, also called the Black Saturday bushfires, ignited
across the Australian state of Victoria on Saturday 7th February 2009, resulting
in Australia’s highest ever loss of life from a bushfire. According to the Victorian
Police, the bushfires caused at least 173 known deaths of people and 414
people injured. The use of multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data
was able to detect and analyse the land cover changes caused by the bushfires
in a rapid and cost-effective way. Many digital change detection techniques,
such as image differencing and post-classification have been widely used for
this purpose. The objective of this research was to quantify land cover changes
by using two Landsat TM data, one pre-fire and one post-fire, acquired on 1st
March 2008 and 21st April 2009, respectively, and to examine the strength and
weakness of different methods. Change detection results derived from each
method were assessed for accuracy against ground survey.
Keywords: Bushfires, land cover change, Landsat TM, Image differencing,
Post-classification comparison

1. Introduction
Australia was frequently ravaged by bushfires during the warmer months of the
year. This is because that the warm and dry conditions intensify the probability
of fire. Especially, the southeast state of Victoria was fire prone owing to the
dense population, rugged terrain and well suited fire conditions in comparison of
other states (Beringer, 2000), as evident with the most notorious bushfire of
2009 Victorian bushfires. According to the Victoria Police (2009), the bushfires
caused at least 173 known deaths of people and 414 people were listed as
injured at 14th February 2009. And many towns which located in the north-east
of the state capital Melbourne, such as Kinglake and Marysville, were badly
damaged or almost completely destroyed (ABC News, 2009). These enormous

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figures led to a heated discussion about how to alleviate the devastating
consequences of the bushfires.

Due to the hazardous nature of bushfires, fire fighters ideally require enough
information about bushfires to ensure to control them in time and minimise the
potential risk to communities and properties. However in bushfire cases, this
task has proven to be difficult due to the factors such as lack of accessibility and
large scales assessment (Graml & Wigley, 2008). For instance, traditional field
survey techniques such as using total station and GPS were accurate, it seems
to be high risk for field survey in fire case. Furthermore, it needed to use more
working hours to collect the data, so traditional regional mapping was basically
time-consuming to be applied for the large size assessment of bushfires
(Paradzayi et. al, 2008). But the online inventory was demanded for the maps of
damaged area. Therefore, satellite remote sensing was introduced to overcome
the problems above.

In addition, the Landsat TM program for Earth observation has provided the
valuable information about the Earth’s surface characteristics over the past
three decades. Before the 2009 Victorian bushfires, a few studies using Landsat
TM data have been already reported to efficiently evaluate the devastated
destruction in the bushfire case. Tupper (2000) analysed that two consecutive
overpass Landsat TM imagery can be used to quantify agricultural loss in 2007
Southern NSW bushfires. Turner et. al (1994) and White et. al (1996) also used
the Landsat TM imagery to assess the burned patterns in 1988 Yellowstone
National Park and Glacier National Park, respectively. Thus, the 2009 Victorian
bushfires detection will be examined by means of multispectral Landsat TM
data.

2. Study area and data set

2.1 Study area
The study of bushfire detection was conducted at the state of Victoria located
on the southeastern coast of Australia between 37° 9 ' 0" and 38° 5 '0"S latitude
and 145° 2'0" and 146° 12 '0"E longitude (Fig. 1).This region had been
recognised as one of the most devastated areas in the 2009 Victorian bushfires,
and many towns such as Kinglake and Marysville were totally damaged. The
town of Kinglake was the worst impacted area, with a total of 120 deaths and
more than 1,200 homes destroyed. In addition, all but 14 of over 400 buildings
destroyed were confirmed in the Marysville area (ABC News, 2009). These
devastating consequences of the bushfires point out that the recognition of land
cover change caused by the 2009 Victorian bushfires is necessary and
important to improve the understanding of specific Earth’s surface change
information for this area.

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 Figure 1 Selected bushfire detection area and the subset of Landsat TM false color
image.

2.2 Data set

Two TM data from Landsat 5, one pre-fire and one post-fire, acquired on 1st
March 2008 and 21st April 2009, respectively, were used in this research for the
investigation of land cover change caused by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. The
specific scene information about these two Landsat TM images can be found in
the following Table 1. The image pair was acquired in the same season in order
to minimise the impacts of seasonal differences of vegetation. In addition, the
operational control of Landsat 5 and its entire data archive were administered
by the U.S Geological Survey (USGS) (Chander et. al., 2004). So all Landsat 5
images used in this research were downloaded from USGS website and
belonged to USGS.

Table 1 Scene information of Landsat TM images acquired on 1st March 2008 and 21st
April 2009.
Acquisition Path/Row Sun’s Datum Map Projection
Date elevation/Sun’s
azimuth angles

1st March 2008 92/86 43.68/58.95 WGS84 UTM

21st April 2009 92/86 29.91/41.62 WGS84 UTM

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3. Methods
Figure 2 illustrates the detail analysis of bushfire detection methods used in this
study, and describes in the following sections.

Figure 2 Flow diagram of bushfire detection framework.

3.1 Data pre-processing

Although the change detection techniques are different on algorithms, all
methods deal with multi-temporal images that are acquired in different dates
and have different sun angles (Cheng et. al., 2004). It can be more difficult to
quantify changes on multi-temporal data that have different illuminations, and
Landsat TM images acquired on different dates have the problem of image shift.
Consequently, this study will firstly take the original 1st March 2008 and 21st
April 2009 images as the reference image and subject image, respectively, to
perform the image to image registration and radiometric normalisation before
conducting the change detection analysis.

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3.2 Change detection approaches
Two change detection techniques including image differencing and post-
classification were used in this research to determine the changes have
occurred by the 2009 Victorian bushfires.
3.2.1 Image differencing
Image differencing is a technique that refers to subtracting a pixel’s Digital
Number (DN) on one date from corresponding pixel’s DN on the second date,
and produce a residual image which represents the change between two dates
(Mas, 1999). The subtraction results in positive and negative values reflect the
areas of change and zero value reflects no change (Sohl, 1999). This method is
the most widely used digital change detection algorithms, because it is
straightforwardness and easily to implement (Sunar, 1998). But this approach
cannot provide a detailed change matrix, and requires selection of thresholds.

In addition, bushfires may make the changes of land surfaces by reducing the
greenness of the vegetation and altering both aboveground and belowground
moisture and exposing soil. Patterson and Yool (1998) claimed that the
vegetation removal, soil exposure and the moisture content change of the
Earth’s surface can be detected by different remotely sensed indices. Thus,
remotely sensed indices such as Normalise Burn Ratio (NBR), NDVI
(Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) and MNDWI (Modified Normalised
Difference Water Index) were integrated in the image differencing approach for
discriminating between the bushfire areas and non-bushfire areas in this study.

3.2.2 Post-classification comparison

In the post-classification approach, images belonged to the different dates are
firstly classified and labelled individually. Later, the classification results are
compared directly and the change areas are extracted (Singh, 1989 & Suzanchi,
2006). Both supervised and unsupervised classification methods can be used in
this approach. Individual classification of two images minimises the problem of
normalising for atmospheric and sensor differences between two dates
(Suzanchi, 2006). Unfortunately, the errors in the individual classification of
each image are reflected in the final change detection (Teng et. al, 2008).
Therefore, this method requires individual classification of images should be as
exact as possible. And Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) was adopted
to generate the land cover change map in this study.

3.3 Accuracy assessment

The accuracy assessment was implemented by the error matrix and Kappa
statistic, which were considered as the standard descriptive and discrete

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multivariate statistics, respectively, in the remote sensing field (Congalton,
2004).
3.3.1 Error Matrix
Error matrix also can be called as confusion matrix. It is a square array of
numbers defined in rows and columns. These rows and columns express the
number of sample units such as pixels, clusters of pixels or polygons, which are
assigned to a particular category relative to the actual category as indicated by
the reference data (Congalton, 2004). Generally, the columns represent the
reference data and the rows indicate the results generated from the different
classification approaches. In addition, several statistical accuracies can be
generated from this matrix such as user accuracy, producer accuracy, overall
accuracy and Kappa coefficient (Foody, 2002).

3.3.2 Kappa Statistic

Kappa can be used as another measurement for accuracy assessment. It is an
index that depends on the classification accuracy after adjustment for change
agreement, and measures the relationship of beyond the change agreement to
expected disagreement (Fitzgerald & Lees, 1994). The Kappa coefficient can be
abbreviated as KHAT. Kappa values range from -1 to +1. If the value of KHAT is
higher, it means that the agreement is stronger. For instance, if the Kappa value
is 1, there is perfect agreement. In contrast, if the KHAT is 0, this means no
agreement. According to the Landis and Koch (1977), the possible ranges for
KHAT can be categorised into three groups: a value greater than 0.80 (i.e., 80%)
indicates strong agreement; a value between 0.40 and 0.80 (i.e., 40% to 80%)
represents moderate agreement; and a value below 0.40 or 40% represents
poor agreement.

4 Results and discussion

4.1 Image differencing
During the image differencing process, different types of remotely sensed
indices were firstly implemented (Fig. 3). Subsequently, each differencing result
generated from different remotely sensed indices was stacked in order to form
the color composite (Fig. 4). Furthermore, the color composite contained three
different surface information including the surface change of brightness, surface
change of greenness and surface change of wetness (Fig. 5). Finally, Maximum
Likelihood Classification (MLC) was adopted to generate the land cover change
map for color composite (Fig. 6).

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Figure 3 Remotely sensed index of: 1)1stMarch2008NBR; 2)21stApril 2009NBR;
3)1stMarch2008NDVI; 4)21stApril2009NDVI; 5)1stMarch2008MNDWI;
6)21stApril2009MNDWI.

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Figure 4 Index differencing of: 1)NBR; 2)NDVI; 3)MNDWI.

8
Figure 5 Color composite of NBR differencing, NDVI differencing and MNDWI
differencing.

Figure 6 Result of image differencing.

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4.2 Post-classification comparison
Land cover classification of each Landsat TM image was implemented by using
Maximum Likelihood Classification, in which six classes were selected including
forest, grassland, bared land, water body, urban area and residential area (Fig.
7). Then, the land cover change caused by the 2009 Victorian bushfires was
derived by comparing two individual classified images pre- and post- bushfires
(Fig. 8). Since all of the vegetation samples were classified as the forest or
grassland before the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Therefore, if a pixel changes
from the forest or grassland to the bared land, it would be classified as the
burned area. On the other hand, it would be defined as the unburned areas if it
is unchanged.

Figure 7 Image classification result of: 1)1st March 2008 Maximum Likelihood
Classification; 2)21st April 2009 Maximum Likelihood Classification.

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 Figure 8 Result of post-classification comparison

4.3 Accuracy assessment

The reference data for damaged areas caused by the 2009 Victorian bushfires
in this case study area was extracted by comparing the ground truth data
provided by the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) and visual interpretation
based on original Landsat TM imagery. In total, the burned areas and unburned
areas were about 1,682.36 Km² (i.e. 1,869,291 pixels) and 12,529.18 Km²
(13,921,309 pixels), respectively.

The image differencing method integrated the remotely sensed indices including
NBR, NDVI and MNDWI offers the best bushfire detection result, which can be
found in the following Table 2. It generates the KHAT value about 84.44%,
indicating a strong agreement. Furthermore, it’s omission error, such as the
actual bushfire pixels are not detected, and commission error, such as the
change pixels but not belong to bushfires, are 14.07% and 13.38%, respectively
(Tab. 4). On the other hand, the approach of post-classification comparison
provides the lowest KHAT value (i.e. 59.84%), which represents moderate
agreement (Tab. 3). And the omission error and commission error are 15.96%
and 46.15%, respectively (Tab. 4).

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 Table 2 Error matrix for image differencing method derived from the NBR, NDVI and
MNDWI (Unit: pixel).
Burned areas Unburned Row total User’s
areas accuracy
Burned areas 1606236 248191 1854427 86.62%

Unburned 263055 13673118 13936173 98.11%

areas
Column total 1869291 13921309 15790600

Producer’s 85.93% 98.22%

accuracy
Overall accuracy = 96.76%, KHAT = 84.44%

Table 3 Error matrix for post-classification comparison (Unit: pixel).

Burned areas Unburned Row total User’s
areas accuracy
Burned areas 1571027 1346617 2917644 53.85%

Unburned 298264 12574692 12872956 97.68%

areas
Column total 1869291 13921309 15790600

Producer’s 84.04% 90.33%

accuracy
Overall accuracy = 89.58%, KHAT = 59.84%

Table 4 Bushfire detection performance acquired from error matrices using different
change detection techniques.
Change Detection Omission Error Commission KHAT(%)
Techniques (%) Error(%)
Image 14.07 13.38 84.44
differencing
Post- 15.96 46.15 59.84
classification
Comparison

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4.4 Comparison of the results of two different change detection
techniques
Although each of these change detection techniques could individually
contribute to the bushfire detection, it can be found from this study that the
image differencing approach integrated the three remotely sensed indices
including NBR, NDVI and MNDWI, represents the better result than the post-
classification comparison technique. This is because that the accuracy of the
post-classification comparison highly relays on the accuracy of the initial
classification, which is especially controversial in that it always pose a serious
error to the final result of post-classification comparison (Teng et. al, 2008). And
the mis-classification errors in the original images always make the results,
which are obtained using post-classification comparison, are judged
unsatisfactory (Coppin et. al, 2004). For instance, most of bared lands were
misclassified as either residential areas or grasslands. The reason is that the
low spatial resolution of Landsat TM imagery results in low capability of spectral
separation between different classes.

In addition, the accuracy of post-classification comparison technique was also

restricted by using the pixel-based classification methods such as MLC. The
reason is that the pixel-based classifiers only make use of the spectral
information or the value of pixel itself (Richards & Jia, 1998). The results
obtained from MLC were unsatisfactory, particularly, in the case of mapping the
bared lands. This is because that the spectral profile of bared lands always
mixed up with the grasslands and residential areas. For example, many bared
lands could be found to be spectral similar with residential areas or grasslands.

5. Conclusions
The profound and serious consequences caused by the 2009 Victorian
bushfires result in the assessment of bushfires become critically significant. In
order to minimise the bushfires negative impacts on society, an efficient and
reliable bushfire detection system was proposed to assess the devastated
effects of the 2009 Victorian bushfires. It is possible to utilise the repetitive
capability of satellite remote sensing imagery to identify the location of change
to the Earth’s surface and integrate the different remotely sensed indices. The
results confirm that the procedure can offer essential spatial information for
bushfire assessment.

Acknowledgements
This research was strongly supported by the Geodesy and Earth Observing
Systems Group (GEOS) of the School of Surveying and Spatial Information
Systems (SSIS) in the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and thanks the
Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) for providing the ground truth data.

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