GIS‑based forest fre risk determination for Milas district, Turkey

Abstract

Forest fres are highly destructive phenomena in both ecological and economic terms. Therefore, it is signifcant to develop measures to detect and mitigate them. In this study, the forest fre risk map of the Milas district of Turkey was studied using geographical information systems and remote sensing methods. In the frst part of the study, the forest fre risk map of the area was developed via a weighted overlay technique with analysis of stand characteristics, topographic features, distance from intermittent streams and built-up environment. According to the resulting forest fre risk map, extremely low-, low-, medium-, high- and extremely high-risk classes covered 0%, 0.5%, 65%, 30% and 0.5% of the forested areas in Milas district of Turkey, respectively. In the second part, the location of a major forest fre, which took place in 2007 in the study area, was determined using the normalized diference vegetation index, the normalized burn ratio, and the burn area index. When compared with the forest fre risk map, it was revealed that 45% of the burned areas in 2007 fell into the high-risk class, while 51% of it was from the extremely high-risk zones. Moreover, the forest risk map was compared with eleven forest fre cases between 2013 and 2019. The results show that eight of these fres took place in high-risk territories. According to these results, it was concluded that the created risk map coincides with the fre incidents.