## 4 Conclusions  
The surveys of vegetation cover using fieldwork and remote sensing in lands burned by wildfire in a Mediterranean forest showed that:  
* Post-fire treatments improve the vegetation regeneration compared to the burned and not treated areas (by about 20% for CFDs and 30% for LEBs); in this sense, the post-fire treatment using LEBs appears to be more promising compared to the CFD technique;
* Surveys by UAV are useful to detect the variability of vegetation cover among burned and unburned areas through VARI, but may be unrealistic when the effectiveness of a post-fire treatment must be evaluated;
* LANDSAT8 images are less reliable to evaluate the land cover post-fire treatments, due to the lack of correlation between VARI and vegetation cover, and may be because of the resolution that is not suitable for small plants. The spatial analysis of distribution of VARI and land characteristics at the hillslope scale proved that:
* The post-fire restoration strategy of landscape managers that have prioritized steeper slopes for treatments was successful;
* Vegetation growth, at least in the experimental conditions, played a limited influence on soil surface conditions, since no significant increases in terrain roughness were detected in treated areas.  
However, the validity of these preliminary results must be confirmed in other experimental conditions, such as in areas with different climate and soil conditions, as well as in soils subjected to other post-fire management techniques. The effects of patch vegetation should be also explored, since a high spatial variability of vegetation may not be fully cap  
Figure 10: Scatterplots of vegetation regeneration (measured by VARI by UAV images of 2016) versus land slope (**a**) and terrain roughness (**b**) among four land conditions after the wildfire of 2012 in Sierra de Los Donceles forest (Castilla-La Mancha, Spain).  
tured by aerial or satellite images. Additionally, the implementation of UAV-based surveys throughout the different stages of vegetation regeneration after wildfire can be suggested, in order to develop a viable tool for monitoring the effectiveness of post-fire techniques over time. A wider validation activity should ensure a practical use of UAV images to support the activity of land managers in planning and implementing efficient measures to restore wildfire-affected areas using vegetation cover. The research question about the viability of higher-resolution satellite images to detect contrasts in vegetation cover among different land conditions remains open. Presumably, the integration of several techniques, combining advantages and limiting constraints, can be suggested for estimation of post-fire vegetation recovery in forest ecosystems with dynamically variable characteristics.  
Conceptualization, M.E.L.-B. and P.A.P.-A.; methodology, M.E.L.-B., M.A.M., D.H., J.G.-R., D.A.Z., and P.A.P.-A.; formal analysis, J.L.M. and P.D.; writing--original draft preparation, J.L.M., M.E.L.-B., P.A.P.-A., P.D., M.A.M., D.H., J.G.-R., and D.A.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research received no external funding.  
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.