Spatiotemporal wildfire occurrence, burn severity and early post-fire vegetation recovery in a tropical Andean landscape: Quilanga, southern Ecuador

Wildfires are recurrent environmental hazards in tropical Andean landscapes, where limited spatial records can constrain prevention, impact assessment, and post-fire management. This study presents an integrated assessment to characterize wildfire occurrence, burn severity, and early vegetation-greenness recovery in Quilanga, southern Ecuador. Official wildfire records from 2010-2025 were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Mann-Kendall tests, Sen’s slopes, and multiscale kernel density estimation. August 2024 wildfire was assessed using Sentinel-2-derived NBR and dNBR, a land-use and land-cover map, MODIS and VIIRS active-fire detections, and geocoded locality level impact reports. Post-fire spectral greenness response was evaluated using NDVI observations acquired before, immediately after, approximately one year after, and nearly two years after the event. A total of 107 reported wildfire records and 18,486 ha of reported burned vegetation area were recorded. Cumulative monthly wildfire activity was concentrated primarily between August and October, with September presenting the highest cumulative frequency and reported burned area. Annual reported wildfire frequency and reported burned vegetation area both showed statistically significant positive trends. Multiscale KDE identified a north-central concentration of reported occurrences, which remained comparatively consistent across bandwidths and after conservative record consolidation, although the extent of high-density zones varied with bandwidth. The dNBR-derived affected area covered 6,866ha, compared with the 6,295 ha of burned vegetation reported by SNGR, and showed ancillary spatial consistency with 77.4% of MODIS and 83.8% of VIIRS active-fire detections, as well as with reported affected localities. Non-forest natural vegetation contained the largest fire-affected area and the greatest absolute extent of moderate and high spectral severity. The integration of operational records, multisensor imagery, LULC data, and complementary contextual evidence provide a reproducible assessment approach for wildfire characterization and post-fire monitoring in data-constrained regions.