Fire regimes and post-fire evolution of burned areas in selected plant biomes of the planet by studying the phenology of the landscape with time series of satellite images – final results

Plant biomes and climatic zones are characterized by a specific type of fire regime that results mainly from the synergy of climatic conditions and vegetation characteristics. The reconstruction of fire history for the assessment of fire regime and the monitoring of post-fire evolution of the burned areas can be studied with satellite remote sensing images. The free availability of (i) Landsat satellite imagery by US Geological Survey (USGS, (ii) Sentinel-2 satellite imagery by ESA and (iii) MODIS satellite imagery by NASA / USGS allow the low-cost data acquisition and processing which otherwise would require very high costs. The purpose of this work is to determine the fire regime as well as the patterns of post-fire evolution of burned areas in selected vegetation/climate zones by studying the phenology of the landscape with time series of satellite images. More specifically, the three research questions we are negotiating are: (i) the reconstruction of the history of fires in the period 1984-2017 and the determination of fire regimes with satellite data Landsat and Sentinel-2, (ii) the assessment of pre-fire phenological pattern of vegetation and (iii) the monitoring and comparative evaluation of post-fire evolution patterns of the burned areas. Here, we present the final results of the project.

Acknowledgements

This research has been co-financed by the Operational Program "Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning" and is co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund) and Greek national funds.