Search

Wildfires are unintentional fires that damage natural environments but do also contribute to ecological sustainability. Monitoring wildfires is therefore a vital component in the management of natural ecosystems. Remote sensing techniques such as burn indices derived from optical data have been used widely to monitor wildfires. The most prevalent focus within the literature of remote sensing of wildfires is on wildfires that occur in large plant forms such as forests and savannas (e.g., Xulu et al., 2021; Shekede et al., 2021). Many studies have applied remote sensing in the mapping of wildfires in South Africa; however, most of these studies focused on the use of a ingle type of remotely sensed data, mainly optical data (e.g., Ngadze et al., 2020; Urban et al., 2020; Belenguer-Plomer et al., 2021). The use of optical data is limited to convenient seasons since technology works optimally in cloud free conditions. In contrast, RADAR has the ability to penetrate clouds, and therefore there is a need to explore the utility of RADAR to map fire burns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]