Rapid assessment of forest area and volume impacted by the 2025 fires in Aude, France

Key message 

Although forest disturbances occur unpredictably, existing monitoring infrastructures can enable rapid, low-cost assessments. By combining national forest inventory data, canopy height models, and freely available satellite imagery, disturbance extent and forest attributes can be estimated without costly ad-hoc campaigns. Applied to the 2025 wildfires in Southwestern France (June–August), this approach estimated 14,000 ha burned, affecting 143,000 m³ (±48,000 m³) of productive timber. This report demonstrated the ability to deliver results within three weeks of the last fire, with even faster reporting possible for future events.

Keywords 
Forest fire monitoring; Remote sensing; Model-assisted estimation; National forest inventory

Publication
Massey, A., Vega, C. Rapid assessment of forest area and volume impacted by the 2025 fires in Aude, France. Annals of Forest Science 82, 45 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13595-025-01316-4

Data availability/Code availability
The data and code in R that support the findings of this study are available online (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17423416).

Handling editor
Erwin Dreyer