Review of fire sensitive areas with emphasis on drought impact with the joint use of PDSI, AHP and GIS (Case study: Forest Saravan, Guilan province)

Manmade fires have been major threat to forest areas in the previous decades. The purpose of this study was to analyze the spatial distribution of forest fires and identify fire sensitive area in Saravan forests. According to the available data sets, fire areas with the highest frequency and areas affected were identified. GPS data were recorded for these areas and transferred to Arcview software to convert bridge became diverse. Map typing was conducted within and outside value layer, combining maps was done to indicate anticipated maps of sensitive areas, the impact of drought on fire was investigated by the PDSI index. Vegetation layer by a factor of 0.426 was the highest weight on the predicted maps of susceptible areas to fire and then were layers of the human factor, distance from roads, temperature, slope, distance from streams, rain, direction, and height of the priorities were next. According to the results obtained It was found that the most common type of fire in the study area were the low surface and limited area and the fire spread in forest litter with extreme heat and low humidity of the air in August and in natural areas because of lack of rain fall caused which the forested areas has become the center of the high risk area that any negligence could result in heavy losses. Also fire suppression in the forests of Guilan depends upon wind condition. Obtained by hierarchical analysis model for the evaluation process, fire dispersal maps were combined with the zoning map, and model validation was performed. Results obtained demonstrate good accuracy of the method (77%).