Forest fire risk zone mapping in the Golestan national park using weighted linear combination (WLC) method

Forest fires in Iran and particularly in the northern forests had destructive effects on the physiognomy of these forests. Forest fire risk zone mapping in forest lands is one of the main approaches of recognition and prevention by educational organizations. In this study, the Golestan national park was zoned based on fire risk probability using weighted linear combination (WLC) method and analytical hierarchical process (AHP) in the GIS environment. The various effective factors on fire including climate, topography, vegetation and human elements were prepared using different methods and sources in GIS. The occurred forest fires map was gathered and generated and the fire occurrences rates in each category of four elements were computed. Regards to the fire occurrences rates in each category and dual comparative analysis, the weight of each element was determined using AHP method. The different layers were combined using weighted linear combination method to generate the fire risk probability map of study area. The obtained map for study area was divided to four fire risk categories including low, medium, dangerous and highly dangerous. The obtained forest fire probability map was assessed using the some unused occurred fire points. The results showed that more of occurred forest fire points were in the dangerous and highly dangerous classes. This results show that WLC method could zone the study area based on fire occurrence probability.