Investigation of fire risk zones using heat–humidity time series data and vegetation

Abstract

AbstractForest fires destroy these areas and have devastating and harmful socio-economic and environmental effects. One of the methods of preventing and managing the hazards created in the field of forest fires is to determine the range of fire risk. The purpose of this study is to determine the high-risk areas of fire in the forests of Golestan province using remote sensing data and field information. For this purpose, the data of MODIS satellite during the years 2005 to 2020 for the middle of November to mid-February, which is the peak of the fire occurrence, were prepared. (NDVI) vegetation index, (NDMI) plant moisture stress index and (LST) land surface temperature were extracted as a 15-year average in these months. Then, using precipitation data from meteorological stations, precipitation index (SPI) was calculated as an average to estimate the amount of drought for the mentioned years. By combining the mentioned indices, the areas with fire risk were extracted. Then, previous fire reference data were used to validate the obtained results of the study. The results of fire potential map evaluation showed that about 6.39% of the area has very high potential, indicating that about 65.78% of fire risk points have been located in this area and about 56.32% of the area is in moderate-fire-risk position, encompassing about 23.16% of the areas with fire risk. Finally, a low-risk zone encompassing 36.34% of the area, which about 11.06% of the high-fire-risk areas are located in this area. Also, the indices of NDMI, NDVI, SPI and LST precipitation have a degree of correlation of 74. 58%, 60.1%, 47.11% and 41. 02% with the map of fire points, respectively.