Our study presents a critical review of the state-of-art in the use of remote sensing technologies for forest wildfire danger monitoring, with a particular emphasis on the fuel moisture monitoring. The review is done according to the three main spectral domains in which most existing Earth's observation satellites are working: optical, thermal infrared, active microwave as well as the synergism among these three spectral domains. Remote sensing of fuel moisture was first done with NOAA-AVHRR NDVI images. NOAA-AVHRR surface temperature images were also used, alone or in association with NDVI images. Both kinds of images have a limited image availability due to cloud cover, but not active microwave images. Fuel moisture monitoring using microwave data is still experimental. Although operational systems using either NOAA-AVHRR NDVI or surface temperature images exist, further investigations are needed to design an operational multi-sensor system which accounts for advantages of each image type, while remaining cheap enough to be competitive. One of the most advantageous synergisms between spectral domains will be combining microwave with optical or thermal infrared data, but there is still a need to assess the applicability of such a synergism to forest canopies.
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