Geospatial and sentinel-2 analysis of Mediterranean wildfire severity and land-cover patterns in Greece during the 2024 fire season

Castro-Melgar, Ignacio (Universidad de Zaragoza) ; Basiou, Eleftheria ; Athinelis, Ioannis ; Katris, Efstratios-Aimilios ; Zacharopoulou, Maria ; Kalavrezou, Ioanna-Efstathia ; Tsagkou, Artemis ; Parcharidis, Issaak

Resumen: Wildfires pose increasing challenges for Mediterranean landscapes, making rapid and reliable mapping of burn severity essential for management and recovery planning. This study applies an integrated geospatial workflow to wildfires that occurred in Greece during the 2024 summer season. Sentinel-2-derived dNBR and RBR indices were used to map burn severity, while CORINE Land Cover and Tree Cover Density datasets provided complementary context for interpreting how severity varied across different vegetation types and canopy-density conditions. A one-way ANOVA was used to summarize differences in burned area among severity classes. The results show that low and moderate-low severity levels dominated most fire perimeters, whereas high-severity patches were spatially limited and typically coincided with densely forested areas. Validation against Copernicus Emergency Management Service data yielded an overall agreement of approximately 94%, indicating that the applied multispectral workflow produced severity extents broadly consistent with independent operational products. By applying a consistent methodology across multiple fire events, this study demonstrates the value of combining spectral indices with land-cover information for interpreting severity patterns and supporting post-fire management. The findings highlight the usefulness of freely accessible remote sensing data for timely fire assessment in Mediterranean environments and provide a basis for future multi-regional and multi-year comparisons.

Idioma: Inglés

DOI: 10.3390/land15020333

Año: 2026

Publicado en: Land 15, 2 (2026), 333 [30 pp.]
ISSN: 2073-445X

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)

Área (Departamento): Área Geografía Física (Dpto. Geograf. Ordenac.Territ.)