Delineating land/forest fire burnt scars with ERS interferometric synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

Cloud-penetrating C-band synthetic aperture radar imagery acquired during two ERS-1/2 tandem missions (April 1996 and October 1997) was used in mapping burnt areas in South Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the 1997 Southeast Asia forest fire episode. Vegetated areas were classified by their low interferometric coherence in both the 1996 and 1997 imagery while the burnt areas were delineated by their increased coherence in 1997. A total of 552 kha of land was found to be burnt scars out of the 3.6 Mha area surveyed. The results were validated using a multispectral SPOT image of the area acquired in September 1997.