Europe's Free Satellite Service Just Made It Easier to Track Wildfires

The Copernicus Browser, which provides free access to satellite imagery from the European Space Agency's Sentinel satellites for the European Union's Earth observation program, has added a "wildfires" visualization layer for Sentinel-2 imagery that went live on August 4. The layer shows active fires in white or yellow, burning vegetation in red, and burned landscapes in dark brown or black. The Sentinel-2 mission's three satellites offer multi-spectral imaging at resolutions as granular as 10 meters in visible light and near-infrared bands, and the browser previously offered 10 default visualization layers using different spectral band combinations. The new layer stems from a wildfire visualization script originating from nearly a decade ago.