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International Journal of Wildland Fire International Journal of Wildland Fire Society
Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Mapping the probability of wildland fire occurrence in Central America, and identifying the key factors

Miguel Conrado Valdez https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9063-4346 A * , Chi-Farn Chen A B , Santos Daniel Chicas C and Nobuya Mizoue C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University, Zhongli District, Taoyuan City 32001, Taiwan.

B Department of Civil Engineering, National Central University, Zhongli District, Taoyuan City 32001, Taiwan. Email: cfchen@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw

C Department of Agro-environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka Nishi-ku, Fukuoka, Japan. Email: chicas.daniel.santos.398@m.kyushu-u.ac.jp, mizoue.nobuya.277@m.kyushu-u.ac.jp

* Correspondence to: miguel@csrsr.ncu.edu.tw

International Journal of Wildland Fire 32(12) 1758-1772 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23080
Submitted: 1 September 2022  Accepted: 18 September 2023  Published: 9 October 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF.

Abstract

Background

Wildland fires are part of the ecology of forests in Central America. Nevertheless, limited understanding of fire probability and the factors that influence it hinder the planning of intervention strategies.

Aims

This research combined climatic, anthropogenic and vegetation factors to identify wildland fire probability and determine the most relevant factors.

Methods

We performed an exploratory analysis to identify important factors and integrated them with fire observations using random forest. We then used the most relevant factors to predict wildland fire occurrence probability and validated our results using different measures. The results demonstrated satisfactory agreement with the independent data.

Key results

Central regions of Honduras, northern Guatemala and Belize have a very high probability of wildland fire occurrence. Human imprint and extreme climatic conditions influence wildland fire probability in Central America.

Conclusions

Using random forest, we identified the major influencing factors and areas with a high probability of wildland fire occurence in Central America.

Implications

Results from this research can support regional organisations in applying enhanced strategies to minimise wildland fires in high-probability areas. Additional efforts may also include using future climate change scenarios and increasing the time frame to evaluate the influence of teleconnection patterns.

Keywords: Central America, GIS, hotspots, MODIS, probability, random forest, remote sensing, wildland fires.

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