FOREST FIRES FROM SPACE: CONSIDERING 
SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RESOLUTION 
Dr. Emilio Chuvieco and David Cocero 
Department of Geography 
University of Alcalä de Henares 
Colegios, 2 - 28801 Alcalä de Henares (Spain) 
KEY WORDS: Forest Fires, Resolution, Estimation, Change-detection 
ABSTRACT: 
Forest fires are a major environmental concern in Tropical and Mediterranean countries, since it is the 
main responsible of vegetation degradation. Satellite remote sensing data could play a crucial role in 
improving current tools of fire prevention and fire effects assessment, since they provide a suitable 
image of spatial and temporal variation to monitor fire-related factors. Real-time monitoring of 
vegetation water stress or burned land mapping are examples of products closely connected to fire 
management planning. This paper explores present applications and future requirements of remote 
sensing systems for forest fire studies, with special emphasis in the needs of European Mediterranean 
countries. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Wildland fires are becoming a major concern 
for several Environmental Sciences. 
Assessment on fire effects at local scale is 
increasingly considered a critical aspect of 
ecosystem functioning, since fire plays a 
crucial role in vegetation composition, 
biodiversity, soil erosion and the hydrological 
cycle. At global scale, fire is the most 
generalised mean to transform tropical forest in 
agricultural areas, and it has severe impacts on 
global atmospheric chemistry (Crutzen et al., 
1979). 
Fire is a natural factor in many climates, such 
as the Mediterranean, with high levels of 
vegetation stress during the summer. However, 
changes in traditional land use patterns have 
recently modified the incidence of fire in these 
territories. Rural abandonment in the European 
Mediterranean basin has implied an unusual 
accumulation of forest fuels which notably 
increases fire risk and fire severity. On the 
other hand, the increasing use of forest as a 
recreational resource involves a higher 
incidence of human induced fires, either by 
45 
carelessness or arson. According to recent fire 
statistics more than 200,000 fires have affected 
the Mediterranean countries of Europe between 
1990 and 1993. Around 2,000,000 hectares 
have been burned in these years, although the 
extension will significantly increase if fires of 
1994 were computed, as they burned, only in 
Spain, more than 400,000 hectares. The 
damages caused by forest fires are very 
difficult to estimate, because they have diverse 
and indirect effects on several environmental 
processes. 
Remote sensing from space is specially suitable 
for forest fire research. The wide area coverage 
and repetitively provided by satellite sensors, as 
well as their information on non visible spectral 
regions, makes them a very valuable tool for 
prevention, detection and mapping of wildland 
fires. During the last decade, the range of 
applications has significantly ^ increased 
(Chuvieco and Martin, 1994a), making satellite 
remote sensing a solid ally in many forest fire 
strategic plans. Remote Sensing contributions 
may be classified in four type of applications, 
related to the temporal scale being underlined: 
short-term fire danger estimation, long-term 
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996