In 2016, two mountains in Mindanao were affected by separate fires–Mt. Piapayungan and Mt. Apo. I wanted to see how the areas have recovered after two years, especially since I helped a little bit with the Mt. Apo response team, so I downloaded some satellite images from the Sentinel 2 and Landsat 8.
From the satellite image above, it looks like the approximately 1,620 hectares of burned area in Mt. Piapayungan has recovered . It probably helped that most of the affected area appears to be predominantly grassland, and not the thickly forested area.
In Mt. Apo, about 50 hectares were damaged by the fire, although that could be a little bit higher given that the image is obscured by clouds. As with Mt. Piapayungan, most of the burned vegetation appears to be recovering. Plus, I heard that the hiking trails are open again so that’s a good sign.
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