Wildfires affecting communities globally can now be tracked more easily by the public through Europe’s free and open satellite imagery service. The Copernicus Browser, which provides access to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel satellites, has integrated a straightforward "wildfires" visualization layer that went live on August 4.
High Resolution and Visual Clarity
The Sentinel-2 mission is particularly effective for monitoring fires due to its multi-spectral imaging capabilities, offering resolutions as granular as 10 meters. The new visualization layer allows users to identify specific elements of a fire zone:
- Active fires appear in white or yellow.
- Burning vegetation is highlighted in red.
- Burned landscapes are shown in dark brown or black.
This enhancement is powered by a JavaScript script developed nearly a decade ago by remote sensing expert Pierre Markuse. The script combines the red visible light band, the narrow near-infrared band (to detect healthy vs. burned vegetation), and the short-wave infrared 2 band, which reveals soil moisture levels to identify scorched earth.
Copernicus vs. NASA FIRMS
While other tools exist, such as NASA’s FIRMS, they offer different trade-offs. NASA’s global maps are updated rapidly within a few hours but provide coarser resolutions down to 250 meters. In contrast, Sentinel-2 imagery is updated every few days but offers a 10-meter spatial resolution. This makes it the premier free public tool for high-resolution observation of environmental disasters and conflict zones.
The integration of this tool, pushed by ESA mission scientist Simon Proud, arrives during a record-breaking wildfire season. With massive blazes currently impacting Canada, France, Spain, and the Western United States, the availability of high-precision data is becoming increasingly vital for public awareness and investigative journalism.
