Possible precursory indicators of the 2023 wildfires in Rhodes Island Greece

During summer 2023 Greece has experienced a serious outbreak of wildfire events destroying an area of 430 km2, as early as end-July, the second highest after the devastating 2021 fire events that destroyed approximately 1380 km2. The most remarkable fire event in 2023 was that of Rhodes Island, that impacted an area of 175km2, which approximates to 12.5% of the Rhode's area, destroying approximately 80 km2 of natural reserve and numerous tourist resorts in the south eastern coastal part of the island. Motivation of the present work was to unveil possible wildfire precursory signals related to various hydrological variables that can be detected using remotely sensed datasets. In that way, downscaled daily soil moisture at 1 km spatial resolution was examined along with precipitation, and vegetation condition information. Results indicated a prolonged period of decreased precipitation and a deficit in soil moisture which followed a relatively wet period of approximately two years. Since there is a wealth of remotely sensed information related to soil moisture and total water storage anomalies, our work demonstrates that it could be exploited to enhance fire models and also to highlight areas at high risk of wildfire occurrence in the near future.