Abstract
ABSTRACT The fire frequency in the Amazon increased rapidly after the 1990s due to deforestation and forest degradation, and it is expected to increase in response to climate change. We analyzed the fire occurrence and assessed seven fire hazard indices in the municipality of Canaã dos Carajás, in the eastern Amazon, for different land use and land cover (LULC) types. We used data from three weather stations located at different heights to compare the performance of the indices using skill scores and success percentages for each LULC. Overall most hotspots occurred in deforested areas and native forests, which were the main LULC types, while few were observed in rupestrian fields, urban areas, and mining areas. However, forests presented the lowest number of hotspots per unit area, especially inside protected areas, and all hotspots in forest areas were observed after a severe drought in 2015. The performance of the fire indices varied as a function of the LULC class and the weather station considered, which indicates the importance of choosing the most appropriate location of the station according to the purpose of the monitoring. The Keetch-Byram Drought Index showed the best performance for predicting fire occurrence for all LULC classes, and forests and deforested areas individually. Despite its simplicity, the Angstrom index stood out due to its good performance in the prediction of days with more than six hotspots.
Highlights
In recent decades, the expansion of the agricultural frontier has led to significant changes in land use and land cover (LULC) in the southern and eastern Amazon (Souza-Filho et al 2016; Souza-Filho et al 2019)
A few hotspots were observed in other LULC classes: rupestrian field (2.8%), urban areas (2.0%), mining areas (0.6%), and water bodies (0.2%)
In 2013 and 2014, no hotspots were registered within forests, while in 2015 and 2016, 32.8% of the hotspots occurred in forests
Summary
The expansion of the agricultural frontier has led to significant changes in land use and land cover (LULC) in the southern and eastern Amazon (Souza-Filho et al 2016; Souza-Filho et al 2019). The use of fire indices is important for identifying the fire risk in a region, performing fire control planning, identifying the best times for controlled burning, generating fire behavior forecasts, and providing danger alerts to society and firefighting teams (Holsten et al 2013; Torres et al 2017). These indices represent practical tools to protect forests, biodiversity, and local communities from fire risk (Chitale and Behera 2019; Gaigher et al 2019). The closest weather station may not be representative of the entire area of interest
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