Assessing the Impact of Forest Fires on LULC Changes and LST: Case Study of Kavaklidere, Mugla

Abstract

The Mediterranean region of the Türkiye is among the areas most susceptible to forest fires. Although the reasons for fire outbreaks vary over time, these events consistently result in the loss of forest resources and significant ecological damage. Forest fires reduce or eliminate many forms of vegetation from the land surface. The Kavaklıdere-Muğla-Yatağan-Yılanlı fire, which occurred between 2 and 8 August 2021, affected a large area. Therefore, the study aims to investigate the land use and land cover (LULC) changes in 2020, 2021, and 2024 within Kavaklıdere district of Muğla. In this study, six LULC classes, Agriculture (A), Bare and Other (BO), Forest (F), Urban (U), Water (W) and Burnt Area (BA) were identified using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and random forest classification technique on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. In addition, land surface temperature (LST) data were obtained using the split-window algorithm applied to Landsat-8 data. The findings indicated that LULC changes are clearly in fire-affected areas, with LST values are notably higher in burned areas than in other classes. The results demonstrate the utility of remote sensing techniques for monitoring post-fire changes in land cover and surface temperature.