RELAÇÕES ENTRE QUEIMADAS URBANAS E CONDIÇÕES METEOROLÓGICAS EM CUIABÁ/MT, BRASIL

Abstract

The establishment of urban fires prevention policies can be defined from studies about its causes. Urban fires are aggravated by specific weather conditions, such as lack of precipitation, high wind speed and low relative humidity, besides it has been related to human activities. The number of fires in the city of Cuiaba MT is high during dry season, which affect the health of the population. Thus, the objective of this study was (i) assess the seasonality of fires attended by the Fire Department and the burnings obtained from satellite imagery; (ii) calculate the Monte Alegre (FMA) and Altered Monte Alegre (FMA+) Formulas; and (iii) correlate fires, burnings, FMA, FMA+, air temperature and rainfall between 2005 and 2009 in Cuiaba/MT. For this, we used the database of the number of occurrences of urban fires attended by the Fire Department Cuiaba MT obtained from Centro Integrado de Operacoes de Seguranca Publica de Mato Grosso (CIOSP) and the number of burnings obtained from Divisao de Geracao de Imagens (DGI) of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) between January 2005 and December 2009. The FMA and FMA+ indices were calculated using the daily precipitation and wind speed and relative humidity measured at 13 o’clock on the Centro Integrado de Defesa Aerea e Controle de Trafego Aereo (CINDACTA I), located in Aeroporto Internacional Marechal Cândido Rondon. The precipitation, air temperature and relative humidity varied annually and seasonally with higher values during the rainy season. The largest number of fires and burnings occurred in the late dry season (August and September), due to low rainfall and relative humidity. The FMA and FMA+ indices were sensitive to weather variations and correlated strongly with the number of fires and burnings without lag, with higher values during the dry season. The FMA and FMA+ indexes can be used to predict future occurrence of fires in Cuiaba-MT.