Forest fire hazard mapping in a GIS environment for a river basin in the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil

摘要

The objective of this work was to map forest fire hazard in the Corumbatai river basin (SP, Brazil), using GIS and Remote Sensing. The basic layers employed were: land cover, hydrography, roads, slope and aspect. The participatory approach was used to define the factors and their relative weights. This procedure allowed the generation of a pairwise comparison matrix and the weights for each factor. The fire hazard map was generated by weighted linear combination among factors. The final hazard levels were reclassified in three categories: low, medium and high. The results showed that, for the whole area (excluding water, mining and urban areas), 4.69 percent were classified as "low hazard", 57.54 percent as "medium hazard", and 37.77 percent as "high hazard". The land use was the main factor influencing the results. Mainly sugar-cane plantations cover "high hazard" areas, while pasture covers most of the region classified as "medium hazard".