Modelling wildfire risk using GIS and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in Aberdare afromontane forest ranges, Kenya

Abstract

The knowledge of wildfire risk is crucial to sensitize and create awareness on fire prevention strategies and mobilization of resources to counter the spread after early detection. This study was undertaken to determine the most important environmental and anthropogenic factors associated with wildfire risk in Aberdares ranges. An integrated participatory decisions and geospatial analysis was used. A pair wise comparative analysis of seven factors namely: proximity to roads, proximity to farming areas within the forest, mean precipitation, elevation, slope, land cover and NDVI was undertaken to attribute weight of each factor in relative to the other though Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). A wildfire risk equation was developed using the criteria weights of respective factors and risk map developed using QGIS version 3.16. Results indicated that land cover (0.39) and NDVI (0.23) were the most important factors in developing wildfire risk maps while proximity to roads (0.04) was the least. Wildfire risk maps shows that Aberdare ranges is within low (43%) and moderate (30%) risk zone and the area occupied by high and very high zones is 13% and 4 % respectively. The study recommends testing the applicability of developed method in other areas with different climatic and land cover characteristics.