Wildfires records for 2017 summer season indicate that Italy, in Europe, had the highest number of fire events, while in terms of forest area burned, Portugal was the most affected country, where sadly this year’s fires have caused the loss of 40 people.
In the frame of the conference "Protecting the forests from the fires: proposals and actions for the preservation and recovery of the territory. Case Study: Vesuvius "(Naples, October 16, 2017), organized by the General Command of Carabinieri, Dr. Bruno Petrucci of the Directorate General for the Protection of Nature and Sea (DGPNM) of the Ministry of the Environment and Territorial Protection and the Sea (MATTM) held an invited presentation with the contribution of the work done by CNR-IREA researchers.
In particular, CNR-IREA has been responsible for processing Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to detect areas affected by wildfires that hit the Vesuvius National Park during the 2017 summer season. Images of Figure 2 show the effects of the wildfire on the vegetation cover within the National Park area.
Figure 2 – Vesuvius National Park: comparison between images acquired by ESA Sentinel 2A satellite (natural colors RGB: 432 red, green, blue with 10 m ground spatial resolution) before and after the major fire events of summer 2017. (a) data acquired on May 18, 2017; (b) data acquired on August 26, 2017. Sentinel 2 data are Copernicus copyright (2017). National Park Perimeter (DGPNM / MATTM).
Figure 3 shows maps of fire affected areas produced by processing Sentinel 2A and Sentinel 2B satellite data acquired by ESA. Each color represents the date when the area was first detected as burned. The automatic mapping algorithm is based on the fuzzy integration of spectral indices, e.g. binary combinations of S2 spectral bands (Stroppiana et al., 2012; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2012.03.001). The algorithm was applied exclusively to "natural vegetation areas" extracted from the Corine Land Cover map (2012) and within the boundaries of the Vesuvius National Park (DGPNM / MATTM).
IREA researchers are committed to developing new methodologies for the integrated use of optical and SAR data made available by the ESA Sentinel constellations for better characterization of the effects of wildfires on forested areas.
Figure 3 - Vesuvius National Park: Burned area maps derived from ESA Sentinel 2A and 2B images acquired during 2017 summer season. Sentinel 2 data are Copernicus copyright (2017). National Park Perimeter (DGPNM / MATTM).