How satellite technology is being used in France to fight forest fires

With climate change and the consequent increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves, summers are now characterised by forest fires. In recent years, to track, trace and ultimately control forest fires, the French space agency CNES is assisting firefighters by offering them help from space.

04:59

On 18 August 2021, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this image of the wildfire currently affecting the Vilia area outside Athens. © contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

According to Helene de Boissezon of the French space agency CNES, forest fires have been analyzed using satellite images for more than two decades.

"That's because satellites can provide very good images of forest fire risk," she said.

"For example, these images can show the level of vegetation stress as well as the level of deforestation. So a number of satellite imagery systems like the International Charter Space and Major Disasters or Copernicus Emergency Management Service provide assessment of fire risk. When a fire is present on a territory, they allow to monitor and assess the progression of the fires."

Speaking about satellite technology, De Boissezon said the most frequently used data is the data that is offered by optical images.

“You have some wavelengths in the middle infrared and thermal infrared that can be used to characterise the status of the vegetation very precisely,” she said. 

She said satellites equipped with radars are also used for observations related to forest fires.

“These are useful too as they show the difference of the status of the ground from a geometrical aspect,” she said.

"For example, if an area has been completely burned with only some trunks and bare soil left, when earlier there was vegetation, this can be seen very easily through the synthetic aperture radar or SAR images."