Remote Sensing Support for Post-Fire BAER Assessment
Following the Greek Wildfires, August 2007

The USDA Forest Service and USGS provided remote sensing support to the Government of Greece for mapping most of the devastating wildfires of August 2007. The Forest Service International Programs and USAID fielded a team of Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) specialists to Greece through the Disaster Assistance Support Program (DASP). RSAC and EROS provided preand post-fire satellite imagery and Burned Area Reflectance Classification (BARC) maps for most of the fires. The BEAR team delivered these images and derived products, and conducted rapid assessment field training with Greek colleagues in a case study watershed near Olympia. The BARC maps are a crucial step in quickly mapping fire effects to watersheds and in spatial modeling of postfire runoff and erosion.