The potentiality of Sentinel-2 to assess the effect of fire events on Mediterranean mountain vegetation

Wildfres are currently one of the most important environmental problems, as they cause disturbance in ecosystems generating environmental, economic and social costs. Te Sentinel-2 from Copernicus Program (Sentinel satellites) offers a great tool for post-fre monitoring. Te main objective of this study is to evaluate the potential of Sentinel-2 in a peculiar mountainous landscape by measuring and identifying the burned areas and monitor the short-term response of the vegetation in different ‘burn severity’ classes. A Sentinel-2 dataset was created, and pre-processing operations were performed. Relativized Burn Ratio (RBR) was calculated to identify ‘burn scar’ and discriminate the ‘burn severity’ classes. A two-year monitoring was carried out with areas identifed based on different severity classes, using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to investigate the short-term vegetation dynamics of the burned habitats; habitats refer to Annex I of the European Directive 92/43/EEC. Te study area is located in ‘Campo Imperatore’ within the Gran Sasso – Monti della Laga National Park (central Italy). Te frst important result was the identifcation and quantifcation of the area affected by fre. Te RBR allowed us to identify even the less damaged habitats with high accuracy. Te survey highlighted the importance of these Open-source tools for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of fres and the short-term assessment of vegetation recovery dynamics. Te information gathered by this type of monitoring can be used by decision-makers both for emergency management and for possible environmental restoration of the burned areas.