Combining multi-spectral and thermal remote sensing to predict forest fire characteristics

Forest fires preparedness strategies require the assessment of spatial and temporal variability of fire danger. While several tools have been developed to predict fire occurrence and behaviour from weather data, it is acknowledged that fire danger models may benefit from direct assessment of live fuel condition, as allowed by Earth Observation...

Predicting forest fires burned area and rate of spread from pre-fire multispectral satellite measurements

Operational forest fire danger rating systems rely on the recent evolution of meteorological variables to estimate dead fuel condition. Further combining the latter with meteorological and environmental variables, they predict fire occurrence and spread. In this study we retrieved live fuel condition from MODIS multispectral measurements in...

Improving the AMSR-E/NASA soil moisture data product using in-situ measurements from the Tibetan Plateau

The daily AMSR-E/NASA(the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System/the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) soil moisture (SM) products from 2002 to 2011 at 25 km resolution were developed and distributed by the NASA National Snow and Ice Data Center Distributed...

Remote sensing evaluation of fire hazard: Towards operational tools for improving the security of citizens and protecting the environment

Forest fires are a threat for both the environment and the security of citizens. This is particularly relevant in the Mediterranean, where the population density is high, and long dry summers drive vegetation into fireprone conditions. Policy makers underline the key role of prevention over damage reparation, and indeed efforts are conducted at...