Land Cover Contributions to the 2023 Maui Wildfires
Presentation Time: Mon, 12/04/2023 - 11:00
Keywords: Maui, dNBR, Landsat, Lahaina, Wildfire
On August 8th, 2023, Hurricane Dora's heavy winds led to the collapse of power lines near Lahaina, Hawaii, sparking a brush fire that decimated the town. Simultaneously, other brush fires erupted on the leeward slopes of Haleakala in upcountry Maui, destroying homes in Kula. Invasive grasses in unused farmland were identified as a significant contributing factor in the aftermath. Notably, a major landowner is currently facing a lawsuit, with allegations of failed land management leading to fatalities during the fire. This study seeks to quantify the land cover on Maui with spectral signatures similar to these high-risk fallow farmlands and to determine the proportion zoned as private agricultural land. Using Landsat 8 and 9 OLI imagery and a K-nearest neighbors algorithm, land cover was classified. The burned areas in Lahaina and Kula were initially identified using a dNBR (differenced Normalized Burn Ratio). From these dNBR-derived polygons, training samples were then selected from a different image taken before the fire for the classification algorithm. Research reveals that ownership of these high-risk areas is divided fairly evenly among private entities, county, and state government agencies, emphasizing the complex nature of responsibility in land management.
