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Arid Land Geography ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (4): 791-803.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2025.244

• Disaster Research • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 based change detection in fire trails under multi-feature combination

AN Jiale1,2(), WANG Lei1,3, ZHENG Jianghua1,2(), LI Jianhao1,2, ZHAO Guobing1,2, Nigela TUERXUN1,2, FU Rong1,2, LUO Lei3   

  1. 1 College of Geography and Remote Sensing Sciences, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, Xinjiang, China
    2 Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, Xinjiang, China
    3 Institute of Modern Forestry, Xinjiang Academy of Forestry Sciences, Urumqi 830000, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2025-05-06 Revised:2025-05-26 Online:2026-04-25 Published:2026-04-28
  • Contact: ZHENG Jianghua E-mail:anjiale@stu.xju.edu.cn;zheng.jianghua@xju.edu.cn

Abstract:

With the increasing intensification of global warming, extremely high-temperature events occur more frequently, resulting in a considerable rise in drought conditions and the accumulation of combustible materials, thereby substantially increasing wildfire risk. The intensity and frequency of wildfires continue to increase, posing serious threats to human safety, ecological balance, and economic development. Previous studies on burn scar change detection primarily rely on independent spectral index thresholds or original spectral features. However, these approaches are highly susceptible to interference from complex environmental factors, including vegetation phenological variations, topographic shadows, and atmospheric conditions, which often lead to false detections and missed burn scar identification. Moreover, existing studies show limitations in leveraging multifeature combinations for burn scar detection, as most methods depend on single-feature extraction and lack systematic evaluation of feature synergy. To address these limitations, this study explores multifeature combination recognition methods to improve the accuracy and reliability of burn scar identification. Based on feature importance derived from SHAP using Random Forest and XGBoost models, multispectral indices, polarization, and original spectral features are integrated to construct 20 feature combinations. Using bitemporal Sentinel-2 multispectral and Sentinel-1 polarization remote sensing images acquired before and after wildfire events, the bitemporal image transformer for change detection (BIT_CD), a transformer-based bitemporal change detection model, is applied to identify burn scars in China and surrounding regions. Experimental results show that the improved model achieves an overall accuracy of 92.7% on the test set, representing a 2.36% improvement over the original model. In comparison, the Intersection over Union increased by 5%-14%, substantially enhancing burned-area detection performance. Based on comprehensive evaluation metrics, the optimal feature combination consists of the improved burn index (NBR_PLUS), Sentinel-1 backscattering coefficients (VV and VH), the red-edge band (RE4), and Sentinel-2 shortwave infrared bands (S2 and S1). The proposed multifeature integration BIT_CD model effectively identifies burn scars and provides a robust methodological reference for post-fire disaster assessment, burned-area mapping, post-disaster reconstruction, ecological restoration, and sustainable development.

Key words: fire trails, change detection, feature combination, deep learning, Transformer