Mapping Spatial Distribution of Forest Fire using MCDM and GIS (Case Study: Three Forest Zones in Guilan Province)

Abstract

Fire in forests and rangelands degrades vast part of natural resources. Although predicting the exact time and location of fire occurrence is a difficult task due to various parameters affecting wildfires, but application of Geographical Information System enables us to identify and control areas with high fire potential. The purpose of this study was to achieve a fire hazard map, developed by integrating several data layers such as topography, climate, vegetation cover and socio- economical factors. Some forest sites of Guilan province of I.R. Iran were selected for the study project due to their high cover density and their frequent fire occurrence history. Because the fire influencing parameters do not affect fie occurrence and distribution equally, a multi criteria method was used to grade them. The Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) was used to consider uncertainties and to weight the criteria within 0 and 1 values. After calculating the Fuzzy weights and allocating them to the raster maps of the influencing parameters, finally the weighted informational layers were integrated and overlaid in the GIS. To assess accuracy of the applied method, the final fire hazard map was compared to further layer consisting of areas with high fire frequency during the last five years. Results showed that 66% of the hazard fire points were completely overlaid on sites with high and vey high fire risk, which reveals the capability of the study method in predicting forest fire potential. Furthermore, short distance between forests, roads and residential areas, identified as the main factors affecting fire occurrence and forest degradation more than the topographical parameters