Total plot scores integrated variations among strata and seemed best suited for remote sensing applications. Rating criteria can be tailored to any ecosystem, to compare fires at multiple levels in a standard way for broad-scale monitoring. Examples of low, medium, and high burn severity from sites in the 1994 Starvation Fire, Glacier National Park, Montana. Regenerated herbs and grass dominate understory. Shrubs and saplings show little mortality.
Most tree crowns blackened or largely scorched, a few green crowns remain.
Overstory consumed including most branching in crowns. The normalized difference burn ratio, a Landsat TM radiometric index of burn severity incorporating multi-temporal differencing. Key, Carl H. and Nate C. Benson. A general field method for rating burn severity with extended application to remote sensing.