Intensity evaluation of fire and restoration process of the forest using remote sensing techniques (Case Study: North Ukraine)

In recent years, we have witnessed the growth of forest fires due to severe climate changes and increased human activities. These fires impose many destructive effects on the environment and human health. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and measure the intensity of forest fires and plan for the revitalization of vegetation.

This study aims to investigate the intensity of the fire in the forest areas of northern Ukraine using Sentinel 2 satellite images and using the indicators of different normalized burn ratios (dNBR), relatively different normalized burn ratios (RdNBR), and relativized burn ratio ( RBR) in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform and comparing the results of the extent of the fire area extracted from the indicators with the data available by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). Also, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used to investigate the process of forest cover restoration.

The results showed that the RBR and RdNBR indices in study areas A and B have been able to estimate the fire extent with 1.43% and 5.96% differences compared to EFFIS data. Also, the results of the NDVI index showed that after two years of the fire, in study areas A and B, 76.06% and 58.86% of the damaged forest cover improved, respectively.