Application of Geographical Information Systems and remote sensing to forest fire danger mapping

Thousands of hectares of natural ecosystems are burned each year worldwide. The destruction is rapidly spreading, especially in the Mediterranean countries, due to the climatic conditions that favor fire occurrence and the quite flammable vegetation types. In human and ecological terms, the consequences of a fire are disastrous. Forest fires start mainly due to human related reasons. The spread rate of forest fires is affected by environmental factors such as the terrain, the weather, and the vegetation types. Forest fires in Greece constitute one of the major ecological threats for land degradation and deforestation. Thus, the development of a decision aid tool (Fire Danger Mapping) for efficient prediction and rational forest fire management in Greece demonstrates an imperative necessity. This study aims to delineate critical fire danger zones in the Sithonia peninsula (Northern Greece). However, fire danger mapping is not an end result. The general goal is the evaluation of the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing technology concerning forest fire applications. The methodology used in the present study a partial approach to obtain a fire danger rating system, by considering the spatial distribution of the basic environmental factors that affect the starting and spreading of a fire. A fire danger important consulting tool to fire managers in order to design regional fire defence plans and preventive treatments. The geographical information systems provide fire managers with an effective tool for developing spatial strategies. Consequently, a geographical information system, can assist managers to establish a digital database, to update and extract any attribute, to construct models, to analyze complicated spatial relationships and to generate valuable management schemes. Firstly, a model was generated for the development of the fire risk map, using a weighted analysis. A fire simulation model (FARSITE or Fire Area Simulator) was used for the fire hazard map formation. Integration between FARSITE and GIS is required and feedback of the fire characteristics to a GIS for further analysis was performed. Additionally, a cross tabulation was performed between the fire risk and the fire hazard map for the generation of the final fire danger map. The last step of the methodology was the accuracy assessment based on historical fire ignition points of the study area.