Detecting of spatio-temporal relationship between drought and fire events in the fields of natural resources in Lorestan province

Improving decisions in fire management requires a complete understanding of the spatio-temporal relationships between droughts and fires. To achieve this, the natural areas of Lorestan province were selected as the research site. The fire data from MODIS satellite products and monthly rainfall data of the province were extracted to estimate SPI drought index for the statistical period of 2000 to 2022. The spatial and temporal relationship between the frequency of fire occurrences and the spatial and temporal distribution of droughts in terms of annual and monthly scales was investigated with the Pearson correlation model in the province. The results showed that the trend of fires in the region is increasing. The months of June and July have experienced the highest frequency of fires in the natural areas of the province. Poldokhtar city has had the most frequent fires in natural areas. The whole region has tended to be dry, but the eastern parts mostly included classes with higher degrees of drought. The results of the correlation matrix showed that only the drought events in spring to summer had a significant but moderate negative correlation with the fire events in spring and summer. Despite the obtained results, this study emphasizes that the connection between fires with drought needs more studies and it is not possible to prove the real relationship between the two phenomena with just one calculation index.