Using imagery of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite, researchers from Spain, the United Kingdom and Germany have discovered that more areas in Sub-Saharan Africa are affected by wildfire than previously estimated. In their open-access paper, published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment, the researchers delineate how they created the first detailed continental map of burnt areas caused by wildfires for 2016.
Specific satellites, such as Sentinel-2, are used to detect disasters like wildfires and map their spreading in order to support relief efforts. Afterwards, the satellites images are used to monitor the traces the fires left behind, especially in remote regions.
Sub-Saharan Africa was picked because...
read moreLand cover changes can impact many areas of life. These changes can affect deforestation, ecological communities, wildfire extent, and urban growth. This advanced series focused on using satellite imagery to map changes in land cover. Users will learn change detection methods, including image subtraction and classification. They will also conduct their own change detection analysis. This training will use QGIS, the R statistical program, and the Random Forest algorithm.
This is a free available online course from the program Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET) from NASA that includes videos and presentations making this course very interactive.
The learning objectives are: