The summer of 2017 was a very unfortunate summer for Campania from the point of view of forest fires. The fire that devastated the Vesuvius National Park between 10 and 14 July 2017 was It was renamed the great fire of Vesuvius precisely because of the exceptional proportions of that event. A month after that tragic event I did a first damage analysis which was then followed by a in-depth paper. With this article, however, I don't want to revisit topics that have already been treated but I am interested in looking at Campania, or at least a part of it, in an overall picture.
By consulting the map you find at the end of this article you can take a journey back in time, going back to 2015, of a part of the Campania Region. The map is currently not available. optimized for smartphones and tables, I therefore recommend using your PC if you want to make the most of it. I used the data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 project, trying to focus on as long a period as possible. next possible July 12, 2017. Why is it did I choose that date? Why that day in the part of the Campania territory analyzed, 26 fire fronts were active, of which at least 12 of them affected the Perco Nazionale del Vesuvius. This is It is possible to observe it thanks to the infrared band of the satellite, in particular the one I used is the band 12. The peculiarity of this type of sensor lies in the fact that it can penetrate clouds and smoke, allowing you to see what is happening. covered by the smoke of a fire, as in this case. As you can see independently by consulting the map, if you make a comparison between the RGB layer of July 12th and the SWIR layer, you will clearly notice where the fires are located.
You will surely have noticed, at this point, the other fires by zooming out. Thanks to the graph on the index NDVI that I inserted you can see if there is There has been or has not been, after 3 years, a vegetative growth in the areas affected by the fire.
There are areas that after three years have still not managed to return to the levels prior to 2017, others that are getting closer and still others that were recovering but have been again covered by fire. A few days ago there were new fires on Vesuvius but not only there.
It would be interesting to be able to quantify how much CO2 and other pollutants were released into the atmosphere on 12 July 2017 from the sum of all those fires. It would also be interesting to quantify the damage to the local ecosystem, what kind of impact did those fires have on the various species that populate those places?
Unfortunately these days I keep hearing Canadair landing at Capodichino, they come from those areas of Campania which are burning again this summer and who knows? if they also come from the mountains of L'Aquila.
I think this song is suitable for this theme!