Exploring Forest Fire Dynamics: Fire Danger Mapping in Antalya Region, Türkiye

• Published in: ISPRS international journal of geo-information Vol. 13; no. 3; p. 74
• Main Authors: Atalay, Hatice, Dervisoglu, Adalet, Sunar, Ayse Filiz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-03-2024
• Subjects: Canada; Climate change; Climatic conditions; Correlation; correlations; Drought; ERA5; Fire damage; fire danger classes; Fire hazards; Forest & brush fires; Forest fires; FWI; Geospatial data; Humidity; Land surface temperature; Meteorological satellites; MODIS; MODIS LST; Precipitation; Regions; Remote sensing; Satellites; SMAP soil moisture; Soil moisture; Soil temperature; Spatial discrimination; Spatial resolution; Surface temperature; Temperature; Weather; Canada; United States > US; Portugal; Turkey
• ISSN: 2220-9964; 2220-9964
• DOI: 10.3390/ijgi13030074

The Mediterranean region experiences the annual destruction of thousands of hectares due to climatic conditions. This study examines forest fires in Türkiye’s Antalya region, a Mediterranean high-risk area, from 2000 to 2023, analyzing 26 fires that each damaged over 50 hectares. Fire danger maps created from fire weather indexes (FWI) indicated that 85.7% of the analyzed fire areas were categorized within the high to very extreme danger categories. The study evaluated fire danger maps from EFFIS FWI and ERA5 FWI, both derived from meteorological satellite data, for 14 forest fires between 2019 and 2023. With its better spatial resolution, it was found that EFFIS FWI had a higher correlation (0.98) with in situ FWIs. Since FWIs are calculated from temperature and fire moisture subcomponents, the correlations of satellite-based temperature (MODIS Land Surface Temperature—LST) and soil moisture (SMAP) data with FWIs were investigated. The in situ FWI demonstrated a positive correlation of 0.96 with MODIS LST, 0.92 with EFFIS FWI, and 0.93 with ERA5 FWI. The negative correlation between all FWIs and SMAP soil moisture highlighted a strong relationship, with the highest observed in in situ FWI (−0.93) and −0.90 and −0.87 for EFFIS FWI and ERA5 FWI, respectively.