An experimental map of landscape fires in Eastern Europe has been created
The Earth Touches Everyone project has created an experimental map of landscape fires in Eastern Europe. This is reported “Vedomosti”.
The map allows you to monitor the situation in ten countries: Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The new tool will simplify the collection of statistical data and the search for the causes of wildfires.
The boundaries of the fires on the map are determined using publicly available satellite images of medium spatial resolution from the European Space Agency's Sentinel 2 satellites. Thanks to these photos, the boundaries of the area covered by the fire can be determined with high accuracy.
The method is characterized by low efficiency – satellites photograph the earth's surface approximately twice every five days, but the intervals between cloudless and smoke-free images can sometimes be weeks. For this reason, the map is not suitable for obtaining operational information that would help put out fires, but only for collecting analytical data. It will help assess the patterns of fire development, their scale and consequences.
Earlier, the head of Rosleskhoz, Ivan Sovetnikov, warned about severe wildfires in Russia in May 2024.
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