FOREST FIRE HAZARD ZONE MAPPING USING STRUCTURAL FIRE INDEX: A CASE STUDY

摘要

Forest fires are associated with various ecological and physical processes. Assessment of the susceptibility of an area to fire outbreaks is an important appropriate action to the prevention of future possible fire. Forest fires are one of the major natural hazards in the north of Iran. In this study we carry out the Structural Fire Index for mapping of forest fire hazard. For this object, the following variables were derived for a study area: vegetation moisture, slope, aspect, elevation, and distance from roads. Those variables were weighted based on their impact on the forest fire hazard and geographical location. Based on this model, three hazard classes are classified into High, Medium, and Low hazard. For validation of hazard zonation, the numbers of hot spots are used from MODIS dataset since 2001 to 2003. Using histogram by zone showed that the Structural Fire Index presented reasonable hazard zonation because the most hot spots are located in high hazard zone and the lowest once are located in low hazard zone.