Spatial analysis of the Morrone wildfires (Majella National park, Central Italy) by remote sensing images

Abstract

In the last decades, wildfires have considerably changed in their frequency, extension, intensity and this is mainly due to climate change and human activities. The year 2017 was particularly significant for the amount of hectares burned in Southern Europe and especially in Italy. Remote sensing has been used to map and monitor wildfires around the world. In the last years, the advent of monitoring programs such as Copernicus (handled by the European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency) offers a unique opportunity to monitor several land features, including wildfires. The aim of this paper is to map the 2017 fire occurred on the Morrone Mountain, in the Majella National Park. We used pre and post Sentinel 2-A data to map burned areas and to define severity classes. We also quantified burned areas in terms of land cover categories and Natura 2000 habitat types. The analysis showed that the burned area is 2184 ha, of which 84% (1837 ha) is within the Majella National Park limits (4% of the entire Park area). Most of the burned area is occupied by shrubs and grasslands, most of which are Natura 2000 habitats. Other burned areas are coniferous plantations and beech forests. The Sentinel 2-A imagery offers consistent, reproducible and unbiased recordings of fire features, an useful tool in remote and mountainous areas such as the Majella National Park.

Keywords

• Wildfires
• Sentinel 2-A
• Natura 2000
• Remote Sensing