Application of Remote Sensing Techniques for monitoring of the climatic parameters in forest fire vulnerable regions in Bulgaria

Forest fires are among the most dangerous natural threats that cause significant changes in forest ecosystems. For the better management of the wildfire-prone territories, the fire weather components like temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration predictions and monitoring within the extreme fire seasons are of great importance. Remote sensing has been identified as an effective tool for better understanding how forest ecosystems respond to these components. Respective spectral indices, like Normalized difference greenness indices (NDGI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Improved Modified Chlorophyll Adsorption Ratio Index (MCARI2) and Moisture Stress Index (MSI), derived from remote sensing methods (satellite data from different sensors-Landsat and Sentinel) as well as the Geographical Information System (GIS) were applied for the monitoring of the climatic parameters in forest fire vulnerable regions in Bulgaria. The climatic parameters dataset from 2008 consisting of the ten-day period mean temperature and precipitation data were collected. The NDVI trends for the studied periods exhibited significant correlations with the mean precipitation and weak or no correlation with the temperature recorded. These results are largely linked to the relative air humidity. Different vegetation types were found to show distinct spatial responses to climatic changes.