University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Associate professor, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Daneshgah/University Street, 56199-11367, Ardabīl, Ardabīl, Iran , roghayeh.jahdi@uma.ac.ir
Abstract: (159 Views)
Every year, wildfires burn large areas in the Hyrcanian forests, of northern Iran. This study aims to know the fire regime and assess fire risk in protected areas in Guilan province (256,488 hectar). Fire ignitions and frequency/frequency of burned areas from 1992 to 2022 were identified. Then fire behavior modeling was done to simulate burn probability and fire intensity (i.e. conditional flame length) using the FlamMap modeling system based on fire weather information, topography maps, local fuel models, and historical fire data. By combining maps of simulated burn probability and conditional flame length, a fire hazard map was prepared in the protected areas. According to the obtained results, 8% of the number of historical fires in the period occurred in the protected areas, although most of these fires have very small sizes and limited burned areas (including 0.1% of the burned areas in the province). Frequent fires (fire frequency more than 1) cover 60% of the protected areas, and 11% of these areas are highly likely to ignite. The changes in the burn probability and fire intensity reflect the diversity of fire activity in the protected areas, especially in the south-central parts, which catch the highest values of burn probability (more than 1) and conditional flame length (more than 3 meters). Finally, the fire hazard mapping showed that 77.7% and 4.8% of the protected areas are classified as very low and low fire hazards, respectively. On the other hand, 12.4% and 5.2% of these areas were placed in high and very high hazard classes, respectively. The quantitative results of this research provide scientific criteria for identifying high-priority areas in protected areas where management efforts can help reverse the increasing fire risk of protected forests.
Type of Study: Research |
Subject:
Geography Information System
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)