Abstract
Abstract. Forest fires have negative effects on biodiversity, the atmosphere and human health. The paper presents a spatial risk model as a tool to assess them. Risk areas refer to sectors prone to the spread of fire, in addition to the influence of human activity through remote sensing and multi-criteria analysis. The analysis includes information on land cover, land use, topography (aspect, slope and elevation), climate (temperature and precipitation) and socio-economic factors (proximity to settlements and roads). Weights were assigned to each in order to generate the forest fire risk map. The investigation was carried for a Biological Reserve in Bolivia because of the continuous occurrence of forest fires. Five risk categories for forest fires were derived: very high, high, moderate, low and very low. In summary, results suggest that approximately 67% of the protected area presents a moderate to very high risk; in the latter, populated areas are not dense which reduces the actual risk to the type of events analyzed.
Highlights
Protected areas have an important value for the conservation and preservation of ecosystems within a framework of sustainable development
The forest fire risk map shows that high and very high risk levels exist in 16% of the total RBCS area
It can be noted that burned areas with high severity are located nearby areas with a moderate and high level of risk
Summary
Protected areas have an important value for the conservation and preservation of ecosystems within a framework of sustainable development. An effective alternative to cope with fires is through prevention (Soares, 1985) For such purposes, it is necessary to identify areas with different degrees of fire risk in order to carry out an effective prevention plan (Andrade et al 2011), as a countermeasure against fire frequency damage avoidance (Jaiswal et al 2002). It is necessary to identify areas with different degrees of fire risk in order to carry out an effective prevention plan (Andrade et al 2011), as a countermeasure against fire frequency damage avoidance (Jaiswal et al 2002)
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