# Post-Fire Vegetation Succession and Surface Energy Fluxes Derived from Remote Sensing
## 5 Conclusions  
This study conducted a pixel-based analysis of post-fire vegetation trajectories and changes in surface energy fluxes after a 2000 boreal forest wildfire over a 17-year post-fire period based on MODIS satellite imagery. The burned area underwent natural succession. The EVI, LST and LSWI dramatically changed after the fire, with the changes in the EVI being clearly more persistent. Therefore, the EVI was the most effective at detecting burns and distinguishing severity levels. Longer-term changes in the EVI, LST and LSWI greatly depended on the seasonality, confirming that the seasonality is another important factor that affects vegetation restoration and land-surface energy fluxes in boreal forests. The strong EVI-GPP and EVI-NPP correlations in this paper demonstrated these factors' potential for use as an alternative method to estimate the GPP (even in a post-fire recovery area), monitor land-surface energy fluxes during vegetation restoration and reduce uncertainties in the estimation of forests' carbon reserves. This study utilized Landsat images to provide detailed spatially continuous and quantitative estimations of the vegetation recovery and demonstrate the influence of topography, which is a key parameter that controls the physical processes in fire-altered areas. The topography  
Figure 10: Examples of the EVI estimation based on Landsat data via a pre-fire image (1999 (**a**)) and post-fire images ((**b**–**f**) represent 2000, 2001, 2006, 2014 and 2016; the spatial pattern in 2004 was similar to that in 2006 and thus was not included). The temporal and spatial characteristics of the EVI illustrate fire-related changes in ground vegetation. The locations of these five tracked samples are shown in Figure 4. The minus and plus signs represent the pre-fire and post-fire periods, respectively. Fire damage classes: High (H), Moderate (M) and Slight (S).  
affected vegetation restoration by changing the hydrothermal conditions, which further affected the carbon-distribution pattern of the recovering vegetation.  
Research on post-fire vegetation restoration and carbon flow should involve large areas and a long time span. Therefore, performing real field validations is usually not feasible for such a study. Future research will approach the relationships between vegetation regeneration and the C-flux in boreal forest ecosystems by using multi-temporal remote sensing techniques. In addition, rough data resolution and simple estimation methods add considerable uncertainty to the estimation results, and the degree of fire interference on boreal forests in different seasons exhibits significant differences. Therefore, more detailed satellite analyses and field data are required in the future to improve the validation of results.  
All authors contributed to the conception and design of this research and the discussion of results. [PERSON], the principal author of the manuscript, was responsible for the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data. [PERSON], the corresponding author, was responsible for the experimental concepts. [PERSON] and [PERSON] contributed the analysis tools and reviewed the manuscript. [PERSON] was responsible for manuscript revision.  
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41771450, 41501449, 41501408, 41361091 and 41571489), the National Science and Technology Major Project of China (Grant No. 2015 ZX07201-008-10), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2412017 FZ021) and the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Program Project (Grant No. 2015[4007]).  
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.