Fire risk assessment of Kurdistan province natural areas using statistical index method

Fire is considered as one of the main causes of disruption and change in natural ecosystems. Identifying the effective factors in the occurrence of a fire and providing a spatial pattern of its risk is one of the basic tools for achieving fire control. The statistics showed that 1124 incidents of fire caused to burning of 7364 hectares of forests and rangelands in Kurdistan province, between 2006 and 2015. Therefore, in this research, a fire risk map was developed in natural areas in Kurdistan province using statistical index method (SI) and Geographic Information System (GIS). In this study, in order to prepare a fire hazard map, six parameters including three natural variables: slope percentage, aspect, elevation and three human variables, distance from the village, distance from the road and distance from the agricultural land were used. From all of 1124 fire cases, 70% of the data (787 cases) were used for modeling and 30% (337 cases) were used for model verification. The results showed that about 50% of the area of Kurdistan province (14400 km2) is in high and very high fire hazard classes. Also, findings showed the high accuracy of the statistical index method in identifying areas with a fire hazard with a precision of 93.5% (315 out of 337 cases of fire).