Susceptibility to wildfire in a conservation unit located in the transition region of Cerrado and Atlantic Forest Biomes, Brazil

Abstract

Created in 2014, the Serra da Gandarela National Park (SGNP), is repeatedly affected by wildfires. This Conservation Unit is located in the Iron Quadrangle (MG), in a transition zone between the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest biomes, and is characterized by a complex mosaic of phytophysiognomies. The aim of this investigation was to compare the performance of two risk mapping models for forest fire in the SGNP and its surroundings, based on two different approaches, being one by multicriteria analysis, AHP method and the other a simple probability method, called Hot Spot History, which provided information on the areas of highest and lowest risk and their environmental and human characteristics. Spatial data from remote sensing and GIS were used to simulate, in sequence, the fire ignition, the fire spread and, finally, the risk of wildfire. The validation of the risk models was performed by the Kappa coefficient (K). The results showed that the model based on the History of Hot Points obtained greater accuracy (0.61) than the model generated by the AHP method (0.54). The Brazilian Savanna, Rupestrian Fields and Field coverings were the most susceptible to wildfire, as they are formed by herbaceous vegetations and are located very close to urban agglomerations and roads. The slopes oriented to the North and West were important for the prediction of wildfires slope and, on the other hand, the slope of the terrain was not important to discretize the areas of greater and lesser fragility to the referred ecological disturbance.