June 2026 | Sense4Fire at the 14th EARSeL Workshop on Forest Fires 2026 in Lisbon

The Sense4Fire team showcased advancements in near-real-time (NRT) and high-resolution monitoring of fire-related dynamics across African savannahs at the 14th EARSeL Workshop on Forest Fires, held in Lisbon from 25–26 June 2026.

 

Daniel Kinalczyk presented Estimating Fuels and Fire Emissions in Near Real Time in African Savannahs, highlighting a novel setup that enables real-time application of the TUD-S4F model. This approach integrates a forecasted time series of the Copernicus Global Land Service Leaf Area Index (LAI) with near-real-time burnt area estimates derived from the GFA-S4F method. The integration allows for timely and accurate assessments of fuel loads, fuel moisture, combustion efficiency, and fire emissions—delivered with minimal temporal latency. [Presentation PDF]

 

Complementing this work, Matthias Forkel presented Fuels and Fire Emissions at 20 m Spatial Resolution in African Savannahs, unveiling the first high-resolution results from the TUD-S4F framework at 0.0002° (~20 m) resolution. Leveraging the new Sentinel-2-based FireCCIS211 multi-year burnt area product from the FireCCI team and a high-resolution downscaled LAI, the approach delivers unprecedented spatial detail in fuels and fire emissions. Initial results demonstrate strong consistency with coarser-resolution outputs (300 m), while significantly enhancing the spatial granularity of fire and fuel assessments. [Poster PDF]

 

The datasets generated from these studies—spanning NRT fuel and emission estimates and high-resolution fire dynamics—will be publicly released in September 2026, further advancing open science and supporting fire science  and climate-carbon cycle research across Africa.