Burnt area detection

A time series of Formosat images was acquired in Mali, at the CESBIO instrumented site in Agoufou, in the framework of the AMMA program (Analyse Multidisciplinaire de la Mousson Africaine). The data have been acquired from June to November 2007, at the rate of one image each 4 days.

Near this site, a fire started at the border of the road, and burned a few hectares before being stopped by sand dunes. The burnt area is clearly visible on the image of October 11th, below on the right, and the comparison with the previous image of Ocotber 7th enables to easily identify the burnt area.

According to CNES studies, a constellation of two (or three) satellites would enable to observe the whole Earth every three days (or two, respectively), with a resolution of about 20 meters. To evaluate the damage due to a disaster (fire, flooding, storm, landslide...), the great interest of such a system would be the certainty of the availability of an image before the disaster: the images before and after-disaster would be directeby comparable (same spectral bands, same viewing angles, low delay between the acquisitions), which would enable a quick, easy and accurate evaluation of the damages.

October 7th, 2007	October 11th, 2007
Images acquired by Formosat-2, in true colours: blue channel in blue, green channel in green, red channel in red