Mapping burn scars, fire severity and soil erosion susceptibility in southern France using multisensoral satellite data

Abstract

This article focuses on the mapping of fire burn scars, fire severity and soil erosion susceptibility using multi-sensoral satellite data. An automatic procedure for the mapping of fire affected areas and for the estimation of fire severity using Sentinel-2 data is presented. The Sentinel-2 based classification results are compared to a burn scar derived by a semi-automatic object-based approach using Sentinel-1 amplitude and coherence time-series data systematically processed by the Sentinel-1 InSAR Browse service implemented on the Geohazard Exploitation Platform (GEP) of ESA. Further, a transferable approach to compute a soil erosion susceptibility index based on Pléiades data is presented. The SAR- and optical-data based methods are applied in a test area near Marseille/Vitrolles, France, which was affected by severe forest fires in August 2016.