 This study compared three methods of assessing burn severity in the field, the composite burn index, CBI, which is a standardized method of assessing burn severity that combines ecologically significant variables related to burn severity into one numeric site index, and two modified versions of the CBI that weight the plot CBI score by the percentage cover of each stratum. The results showed that the CBI had higher R2 and better classification accuracy than the weighted versions of the CBI. Additionally, the study found that the weighted versions of the CBI had lower accuracies because they decreased the influence of the dominant tree stratum, which should have the strongest relationship to optically sensed reflectance, and increased the influence of the substrate strata, which should have the weakest relationship with optically sensed reflectance in forested ecosystems. Furthermore, the study also found that predictive models for the relative difference to normalized burn ratio, RDNBR, showed slightly better classification accuracy than those for the difference normalized burn ratio, DNBR, while DNBR had slightly better explanatory power. However, there was no clear difference between the two models. This article was authored by C. Alina Kanzler and Donald MacKenzie. We are article.tv, links in the description below.