Trends and applications in wildfire burned area mapping: Remote sensing data, cloud geoprocessing platforms, and emerging algorithms

Wildfires pose an increasing risk to expanding urban population centers, and to critical habitats for plant and animal species. Improving current wildland management strategies are vital to mitigating loss of global biodiversity and preventing the displacement of urban residents. Accurate maps of areas burned by wildfires is a primary source of information required for developing wildland management strategies. Advancements in underlying technologies for mapping wildfires comes from three key areas: 1) remotely sensed data, 2) cloud geoprocessing platforms, and 3) emerging image processing algorithms. Trends across these three areas were explored in this review, in addition to an in-depth discussion and comparison of optimal usage scenarios. This review provides crucial insights for researchers and practitioners keen on exploring emerging methods that hold the potential to improve wildfire burned area mapping procedures.