Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2026, V. 23, No. 5, pp. 429-434
Possibility of wildfire front detection using Sentinel and Landsat data in application to fire spread prediction
S.A. Khvostikov 1 , A.V. Kashnitskii 1 , S.A. Bartalev 1 1 Space Research Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia
Accepted: 04.09.2026
DOI: 10.21046/2070-7401-2026-23-5-429-434
Currently, there is an unprecedented amount of open-access high resolution data (10–30 m per pixel) due to presence of three Sentinel-2 satellites and two Landsat satellites on the orbit of Earth. This abundance of data created a possibility of regular wildfire monitoring with high level of spatial and temporal resolution, with time interval between observations ranging from one day and to tens of minutes. This information can be processed using existing instruments (for example those of VEGA-Science system) to evaluate burn area and fire front position. In the article, we show examples of such wildfire monitoring at 18-minute, 1-day and 4-day time intervals. Such observations can be used to set initial conditions for wildfire prediction and for tuning of fire spread models. Also, these data potentially can be used to evaluate spread speed for different fire front areas and recreate fire history. Wildfire modeling, performed in the article, showed that the use of detailed remote sensing data can produce predictions with high level of agreement with actual fire behavior. Also, remote sensing data was used to manually tune model parameters, leading to notable improvement of predictions. In future, on the basis of the results of this work and instruments developed at Space Research Institute RAS, it will be possible to create a wildfire monitoring system using Sentinel-2 and Landsat data that can predict fire spread and allow adjusting model parameters.
Keywords: Sentinel-2, Landsat, wildfires, remote sensing, burn mapping, forest fire monitoring, modeling, model parameter tuning
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