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ABSTRACT Forest ecosystems are among the most important natural resources on the planet and play a key role in the global carbon budget. Despite the enormous importance of forests to the entire planet, these ecosystems are affected by a variety of disturbances. One of the disturbance types is represented by fires. Cyprus is located in Eastern Mediterranean, which is an area where forest fires frequently occur, especially during the summer period. This study is mainly focused on burned area mapping and damage assessment on land surface and air pollutants for the case of the Arakapas fire in Cyprus which occurred on 3rd of July in 2021. For the purposes of this study, the satellite images acquired from Sentinel-2 were used for the burnt area mapping and the fire severity estimation based on the dNBR (difference Normalized Burn Ratio) spectral index, and other ancillary datasets were used for the damage assessment. Furthermore, on the morning of the 5th of July, due to the change of wind direction, the smoke travelled from the centre of the island to the southwest, and it was detected by the multiwavelength Raman lidar, installed in Limassol. Thus, the optical properties of the smoke plume retrieved from the lidar are presented. The PollyXT-CYP lidar system of the ECoE, observed multiple layers between 500 m and 2.5 km originating by the burned area northeast to Limassol. The depolarization ratio of 5-8% and lidar ratio of 45sr indicate mixtures of local soil dust and fresh smoke in the lower troposphere.
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