MASK IMPORTANCE IN BURNED AREA MAPPING BASED ON REMOTE SENSING, GIS AND OPEN-SOURCE PRODUCTS

Abstract. Forest and field fires are an increasing problem for EU countries located in the southern parts of Europe. With each passing day, the need to develop a technological scheme for monitoring the territories affected by fires and the timely provision of open data in order to recover damages is increasing.
In this study, the method used to study burned areas is based on the analysis of multispectral satellite images, the differences in terrain reflectivity and the use of indices to highlight the differences between areas with healthy vegetation and burned areas, taking into account their different signatures. Open source software - SNAP, QGIS, images from Sentinel-2 with bands in the green, red, near-infrared and short-wave infrared spectral bands were used for the purposes of the research. Data from the Inspire Directive was also used to analyze the types and characteristics of affected areas.
In many cases, water bodies show a similar difference as the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) index, for this reason the need for their preliminary masking arises. Clouds that appear in each input image are also masked. A combined water and cloud mask is applied. To detect the water bodies, NDWI was used to maximize the reflectance of the water body in the green band and minimize the reflectance of the water body in the NIR range.