In 2023, Greece faced its worst wildfire season, with nine major fires causing unprecedented environmental damage of 1470.31 km². This article uses Copernicus Land Monitoring Service and Sentinel-2 data, employing advanced remote sensing and GIS techniques to analyze spatial dynamics, map burn severity, assess fire extent, and highlight pre-fire tree density and land cover. The study focuses on the catastrophic fire in the Evros region and the damage to the National Forest Park of Dadia–Lefkimmi–Soufli. It also analyzes significant fires in Rhodes, Attica, Thessaly, Evia, Corfu, and Magnesia, emphasizing the compounded challenges posed by terrain, climate, and human factors in those areas. Additionally, the climate data for each affected area were compared with the weather conditions prevailing at the time of the fires. Copernicus Land Cover and Tree Density data are integrated to aid future management, assessment, and restoration. The analysis of maps and fire statistics underscores a notable pattern: areas with higher pre-fire tree density experienced correspondingly higher burn severity. This research underscores the crucial role of such data in assessing wildfire impact. In addition, compared with Copernicus Emergency Management Service, the burned area maps validate the accuracy and reliability of the utilized satellite data. The total burned area was assessed with a high accuracy rate of 96.28%.

Wildfires are a recurrent and intensifying natural hazard in Mediterranean regions like Greece, driven by prolonged heatwaves, evolving climatic conditions, and human activities. This study leverages Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and Copernicus geospatial data to assess four early-season wildfire events during May and June 2024, which collectively affected 43.44 km². Burn severity, land cover, and tree cover density were analyzed to evaluate the spatial and environmental impacts of these fires. Validation against Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) data yielded an overall accuracy of 95.79%, confirming the reliability of the methodology. The Achaia-Ilia wildfire, spanning 40.55 km², exhibited the highest severity, with 26.93% classified as moderate to high severity. Smaller fires, such as Katsimidi (0.66 km²) and Stamata (1.41 km²), revealed the influence of vegetation type and density on fire dynamics, with Stamata’s sparse tree cover mitigating fire spread. The findings highlight the utility of remote sensing technologies for wildfire monitoring, and underscore the need for tailored management strategies, from vegetation control to urban planning, to enhance ecosystem resilience and mitigate wildfire risks in Mediterranean landscapes.

Wildfires pose increasing challenges for Mediterranean landscapes, making rapid and reliable mapping of burn severity essential for management and recovery planning. This study applies an integrated geospatial workflow to wildfires that occurred in Greece during the 2024 summer season. Sentinel-2-derived dNBR and RBR indices were used to map burn severity, while CORINE Land Cover and Tree Cover Density datasets provided complementary context for interpreting how severity varied across different vegetation types and canopy-density conditions. A one-way ANOVA was used to summarize differences in burned area among severity classes. The results show that low and moderate-low severity levels dominated most fire perimeters, whereas high-severity patches were spatially limited and typically coincided with densely forested areas. Validation against Copernicus Emergency Management Service data yielded an overall agreement of approximately 94%, indicating that the applied multispectral workflow produced severity extents broadly consistent with independent operational products. By applying a consistent methodology across multiple fire events, this study demonstrates the value of combining spectral indices with land-cover information for interpreting severity patterns and supporting post-fire management. The findings highlight the usefulness of freely accessible remote sensing data for timely fire assessment in Mediterranean environments and provide a basis for future multi-regional and multi-year comparisons.