The Effects of Grain Size on Morphological Patterns and Land Cover Within Boreal Wildfire Residual Patches

The post-fire conditions comprise a matrix of burned, partially burned, and unburned patches that are ecologically and financially important. Studying the unburned patches helps planners assess the effectiveness of emulating natural disturbance patterns. MSPA quantifies spatial patterns in terms of their geometry and connectivity of landscape features. The morphological elements were identified for residual patches extracted from the RED-084 fire. Grain size coarsening and parameterizations were measured to find if they altered the frequency of morphologies within 10 land cover classes. Conifers and water classes were the most abundant and significantly different from other classes across most morphologies. Connectivity and transition changes had significant effects on islets and edges respectively. Edge width had a significant effect on cores, perforations, edges, and branches across all grain sizes. These findings can assist in developing a set of rules on the composition and configuration of land cover and morphologies left behind after harvesting.