On the Need of Quick Monitoring for Wildfire Response from City Halls

Abstract

This case study shows that the assessment of burned areas can be done with remote sensing data free of charges in a simple laptop. Describing the open-source software and the methodology step by step, we expect to make it available for county workers in areas attained by wildfires, where a quick response is much needed, as the availability of information is essential for the immediate planning of mitigation measures, such as restoring road access, allocate funds for the recovery of human dwellings and assess further restoration of the ecological system. The example used is a succession of wildfires in Portugal mainland during the summer of 2017, that kills more than 60 people and seriously damaged local resources. Wildfires devastate forest ecosystems, having direct impact on vegetation cover and animal population. The economic interest is also attained, as resin extraction ends and the pine wood burned become useless for the most noble applications, so its value decreased. The tools described in this paper establish a baseline for major changes in forest ecosystems recover and allows to target priorities. Moreover, the result allows the follow up of the surface fuel loading, enabling the targeting of restoration measures in a time basis planning.