Remotely Sensed Data Fusion for Spatiotemporal Geostatistical Analysis of Forest Fire Hazard

Abstract

Forest fires are a natural phenomenon which might have severe implications on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. Future projections predict that, under a climate change environment, the fire season would be lengthier with higher levels of droughts, leading to higher fire severity. The main aim of this paper is to perform a spatiotemporal analysis and explore the variability of fire hazard in a small Greek island, Skiathos (a prototype case of fragile environment) where the land uses mixture is very high. First, a comparative assessment of two robust modeling techniques was examined, namely, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) knowledge-based and the fuzzy logic AHP to estimate the fire hazard in a timeframe of 20 years (1996–2016). The former technique was proven more representative after the comparative assessment with the real fire perimeters recorded on the island (1984–2016). Next, we explored the spatiotemporal dynamics of fire hazard, highlighting the risk changes in space and time through the individual and collective contribution of the most significant factors (topography, vegetation features, anthropogenic influence). The fire hazard changes were not dramatic, however, some changes have been observed in the southwestern and northern part of the island. The geostatistical analysis revealed a significant clustering process of high-risk values in the southwestern and northern part of the study area, whereas some clusters of low-risk values have been located in the northern territory. The degree of spatial autocorrelation tends to be greater for 1996 rather than for 2016, indicating the potential higher transmission of fires at the most susceptible regions in the past. The knowledge of long-term fire hazard dynamics, based on multiple types of remotely sensed data, may provide the fire and land managers with valuable fire prevention and land use planning tools.

Selective Shrub Management to Preserve Mediterranean Forests and Reduce the Risk of Fire: The Case of Mainland Portugal

“…Faced with this situation, political agents have been forced to invest in better planning and adopt fire prevention strategies [10,11]. According to the new European Union strategy for forests and the forest sector, there is a need for the reinforcement of protection measures relating to issues such as habitat fragmentation, the spread of invasive alien species, climate change, water scarcity, fires, storms and pests [12].…”

Review of Geoinformatics-Based Forest Fire Management Tools for Integrated Fire Analysis

“…Analysis Key Sources Exposure Analysis Fire risk [23]; [24]; [25]; [26]; [27]; [28]; [29]; [71]; [72]; [73]; [89]; [90]; [91];…”

“…Finally, they combined the integrated fire risk map with the visibility analysis, so that they can efficiently cover the most vulnerable regions through the proposal of best location scheme of watchtowers. Sakellariou et al [25] determined the spatiotemporal evolution of forest fire risk in a small island (Fig. 2a), based on the impact of topography, human intervention (e.g.…”

“…2. a) Estimation of fire hazard in Skiathos island, Greece (Adapted from [25]), b) Estimation of burn probability in Thasos island, Greece (Adapted from [53]).…”

“…The spatiotemporal monitoring of land use changes is of crucial importance, since it permits us to evaluate the pressures against forests [25]. In general, the most dominant pressures consist of urbanization (including the transformation of forest to agricultural land) and forest fires.…”