Is it possible to timely and accurately estimate wildfire burnt areas using remote sensing techniques?

It is a fact that Mediterranean Europe suffers severe wildfire events, as it occurred in summer 2003. The Valencia de Alcántara fire that took place near the border between Portugal and Spain, was one of the mentioned events. The present paper tries to evaluate how reliable are burnt area estimations made from medium resolution satellite images, processed and delivered in near real time. In order to address this task some MODIS and SPOT-5 images, corresponding to different dates, were used. MODIS images were processed for quick estimations and results were found to be an ideal way for a first approximation. On the other hand, SPOT-5 images were used for burnt area mapping at local scale and for MODIS estimation assessment.