SAR remote sensing of forest fires: Gallipoli forest fire in 2008

Mapping forest fire extent and impact from remotely sensed observations had been the subject of much research in the past. Optical observations had been found to be well suited for acquiring information such as fire location, spatial extent, distribution of burned areas, and types of land cover because of their ability to retain sensitivity to the spectral changes of burned and healthy vegetation, changes in temperature during a fire, and their straightforward and intuitive interpretability. Despite the results using optical satellite data for estimation of fire damage were satisfactory, those methodologies still had limited success since the presence of clouds, smoke, haze, and lack of solar radiation could prevent the acquisition of optical data.