Susceptibility to vegetation cover fires
an evaluation using multi-criteria and radio frequency methods (Cotacachi Cantón, Ecuador)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/cig.5867Keywords:
Cotacachi, fire, multi-criteria analysis, radio frequency, vegetation coverAbstract
In Ecuador, around 11688.88 hectares of vegetation cover were lost in 2023 due to 1495 registered vegetation cover fires (ICV).. Therefore, this research aimed to determine areas susceptible to ICV for the Cotacachi cantón in Ecuador and its two differentiated zones. To evaluate the susceptibility to ICV in a GIS environment, the multi-criteria methods of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Radio Frequency (RF) were applied. For this purpose, 11 factors were established classified into topographic (altitude, slope, terrain orientation), climatic (precipitation, temperature, potential evapotranspiration, water deficit and wind speed) and anthropic (land cover, proximity to roads and proximity to agricultural areas). Afterwards, spatially explicit models were obtained, and the results were validated with the ROC curve and the area under the curve (AUC). The results show that around 47% of the territory is at extreme risk of ICV according to the AHP multi-criteria method and 53% of the canton according to the RF method, with a higher concentration in the subtropical zone than in the Andean zone. The performance values show that after comparing the models with heat spot information from the FIRMS-NASA system for the period 2000-2020, an AUC of 0.824 was obtained for the AHP model and an AUC value of 0.902 for the RF model. While, when compared with historical fires from the period 2018-2020, an AUC of 0.748 was obtained for the AHP model and an AUC value of 0.755 for the RF model. Finally, it is concluded that the AHP and RF multi-criteria models presented similar results and performances with minimal differences.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Paul Arias-Muñoz, Luis Chuma-Pomasqui, Pablo Coronado Cacuango, Gabriel Jácome-Aguirre

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