Investigation of burned areas with multiplatform remote sensing data on the Rhodes 2023 forest fires

Abstract

Remote sensing (RS) data is an essential tool to quickly detect the effects on the environment of significant forest fires that occur every year. The motivation of this research was to detect the burned areas with RS data quickly after the Rhodes 2023 Forest Fire. For this purpose, optical sensing systems and microwave sensing systems were used. In addition, the Sentinel-5P dataset was preferred to determine the difference due to harmful gases in the atmosphere and to link it with forest fires. Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B data enable change detection by creating the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). As a result, it was determined that approximately 18,900 Ha of forest area was burned or bared. According to the CORINE 2018 burned forest area was approximately one-fifth of the total forest area.

Keywords

• Burned Area Detection
• CORINE 2018
• Forest Fires
• Multiplatform Remote Sensing
• The Rhodes Island 2023 Forest Fires