Assessing Vegetation Health Following the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire Using Remote Sensing
Faculty Mentor
Brian Buchanan
Presentation Type
Poster
Start Date
4-14-2026 11:30 AM
End Date
4-14-2026 1:30 PM
Location
PUB NCR
Primary Discipline of Presentation
Environmental Science
Abstract
Climate change, combined with decades of altered fire regimes and fire suppression, has increased fuel accumulation across western U.S. forests, contributing to more frequent, larger, and more intense wildfires. Remote sensing offers an effective approach for analyzing these large-scale fire events and their ecological impacts, as satellite imagery enables affordable, accessible, and reproducible monitoring of vegetation change across broad spatial and temporal scales. This study examined the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire in the Methow Valley, Washington. Burning 265,108 acres, it was the largest wildfire in Washington State history at the time and caused extensive agricultural and forest damage. Post-fire vegetation recovery was evaluated to assess ecosystem response to this high-severity disturbance. We analyzed multispectral imagery from the Landsat satellite program using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a widely applied indicator of plant productivity and greenness. NDVI differences were assessed immediately after the fire and at one-, three-, and five-year intervals post-fire to track recovery over time. This poster presents the results of this study, which indicate that vegetation health increased progressively. Additional factors and patterns are critically analyzed, and compared to the remote sensing data. Overall, this poster demonstrates the utility of remote sensing in analyzing the complexities of the ever-increasing wildfire danger within the state.
Recommended Citation
Pentico, Rachael, "Assessing Vegetation Health Following the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire Using Remote Sensing" (2026). 2026 Symposium. 35.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2026/ps_2026/p2_2026/35
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Assessing Vegetation Health Following the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire Using Remote Sensing
PUB NCR
Climate change, combined with decades of altered fire regimes and fire suppression, has increased fuel accumulation across western U.S. forests, contributing to more frequent, larger, and more intense wildfires. Remote sensing offers an effective approach for analyzing these large-scale fire events and their ecological impacts, as satellite imagery enables affordable, accessible, and reproducible monitoring of vegetation change across broad spatial and temporal scales. This study examined the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire in the Methow Valley, Washington. Burning 265,108 acres, it was the largest wildfire in Washington State history at the time and caused extensive agricultural and forest damage. Post-fire vegetation recovery was evaluated to assess ecosystem response to this high-severity disturbance. We analyzed multispectral imagery from the Landsat satellite program using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), a widely applied indicator of plant productivity and greenness. NDVI differences were assessed immediately after the fire and at one-, three-, and five-year intervals post-fire to track recovery over time. This poster presents the results of this study, which indicate that vegetation health increased progressively. Additional factors and patterns are critically analyzed, and compared to the remote sensing data. Overall, this poster demonstrates the utility of remote sensing in analyzing the complexities of the ever-increasing wildfire danger within the state.
