Abstract:

Abstract Torres del Paine National Park (PNTP) is characterized as a representative geographical area of the world’s ecosystems, containing high scenic beauty and wide variety of ecosystems. The aim of this work is to analyze the spatial and temporal trends of vegetation at PNTP using remote images from the Landsat platforms, the MOD13A3 product from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), coverage maps surface Global Land cover Maps of ESA/CCI 2005 and 2010 and a land cover map of continental Chile of 2014. In addition, the products of Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) and meteorological data from the Torres del Paine meteorological station were used to analyze the environmental conditions that presented the park while the fire occurred the years 2011-2012. To determine the magni­tude of the changes of vegetation affected by fire at PNTP a nonparametric trend analysis was use with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of MODIS from 2002 to 2016 and the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) for the fire occurred the year 2005 and the years 2011-2012. The results show that between both fires it is been affected more than 30.000 hectares of the national park, being the “Scrub” and “Forest” coverage the most affected due to the high level of severity and the low regeneration of the burn area (less than 56%). The soil moisture does not exceed 20% m3m-3 before the fire and the rainfall does not exceed 101 mm during the days of fire, which is related to an increase in the probability of propa­gation of the fire. In this work is possible to realize that remote sensing can be used in the fire management to regard the national parks with the objective of preserve and conserve the flora, fauna and scenic beauty of Chile.

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