Mapping burn severity and monitoring CO content in Türkiye’s 2021 Wildfires, using Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-5P satellite data on the GEE platform

Abstract

This study investigated forest fires in the Mediterranean of Türkiye between July 28, 2021, and August 11, 2021. Burn severity maps were produced with the difference normalised burned ratio index (dNBR) and difference normalised difference vegetation index (dNDVI) using Sentinel-2 images on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform. The burned areas were estimated based on the determined burning severity degrees. Vegetation density losses in burned areas were analysed using the normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series. At the same time, the post-fire Carbon Monoxide (CO) column number densities were determined using the Sentinel-5P satellite data. According to the burn severity maps obtained with dNBR, the sum of high and moderate severity areas constitutes 34.64%, 20.57%, 46.43%, 51.50% and 18.88% of the entire area in Manavgat, Gündoğmuş, Marmaris, Bodrum and Köyceğiz districts, respectively. Likewise, according to the burn severity maps obtained with dNDVI, the sum of the areas of very high severity and high severity constitutes 41.17%, 30.16%, 30.50%, 42.35%, and 10.40% of the entire region, respectively. In post-fire NDVI time series analyses, sharp decreases were observed in NDVI values from 0.8 to 0.1 in all burned areas. While the Tropospheric CO column number density was 0.03 mol/m 2 in all regions burned before the fire, it was observed that this value increased to 0.14 mol/m 2 after the fire. Moreover, when the area was examined more broadly with Sentinel 5P data, it was observed that the amount of CO increased up to a maximum value of 0.333 mol/m 2 . The results of this study present significant information in terms of determining the severity of forest fires in the Mediterranean region in 2021 and the determination of the CO column number density after the fire. In addition, monitoring polluting gases with RS techniques after forest fires is essential in understanding the extent of the damage they can cause to the environment.

Precise vegetation restoration in arid regions based on potential natural vegetation and potential normalized difference vegetation index

“…Five “COPERNICUS/S2_SR” images with complete coverage of the study area were acquired from 1 July 2020 to 30 September 2020. These imageries are atmospherically corrected and have a high geometric accuracy (Saad El Imanni et al 2022; Yilmaz et al 2023). These images were preprocessed in the GEE platform, including cloud removal, and the red (B4) and near‐infrared (B8) bands with a spatial resolution of 10 m were extracted to produce the NDVI in tiff format.…”

ML‐Based Hybrid SAR and Optical Image LULC Mapping and Change Analysis With Variations in the Air Quality of the Imphal Valley, North‐East India

“…Land use and land cover changes (LULCC) have widespread impacts on ecosystems, air quality and climate patterns in the long run, making it a global concern. Urbanization, deforestation, agricultural expansion, forest fires, and shifting cultivation practices driven by human activities have accelerated LULCC rates, posing environmental challenges (Borgohain et al., 2023; Gupta et al., 2023; Puri et al., 2011; Roy et al., 2022; Yilmaz et al., 2023). LULCC significantly affects air quality by influencing the dispersion and concentration of air pollutants in the atmosphere (Yilmaz et al., 2023; Yin et al., 2019).…”

“…Urbanization, deforestation, agricultural expansion, forest fires, and shifting cultivation practices driven by human activities have accelerated LULCC rates, posing environmental challenges (Borgohain et al., 2023; Gupta et al., 2023; Puri et al., 2011; Roy et al., 2022; Yilmaz et al., 2023). LULCC significantly affects air quality by influencing the dispersion and concentration of air pollutants in the atmosphere (Yilmaz et al., 2023; Yin et al., 2019). Understanding the relationship between LULCC and air quality is crucial for sustainable development.…”

Assessment of Burn Severity and Monitoring of the Wildfire Recovery Process in Mongolia

“…Wildfires are natural phenomena that have been occurring for centuries; however, in recent years their severity and frequency have increased significantly, posing substantial challenges to ecosystems and human communities [1][2][3][4]. Wildfires have emerged as a global concern due to their destructive potential and wide-ranging consequences.…”

“…Other issues and different phenomena occur in different areas within different natural zones around the world. We collected and reviewed a few studies from different study areas, including Siberia, Russia [23,25,26], Indonesia [27], Canada [28,29], Australia [18,[30][31][32], Spain [33], Portugal [13], the Mediterranean [7,[34][35][36][37], Turkey [1,4], Greece [2,3], China [10,[38][39][40][41], California and Alaska [42][43][44], the US [45][46][47][48][49], Peru [14], Iran [50], Bolivia [51], the Amazon of Brazil [52] and India [53]. The wildfire studies from each country had their own characteristics.…”