Wildfire hazard and risk assessment: The case of Gabala district

Abstract

As one of the main natural resources for humans, protection of forest resources is one of the main ecological problems of the world. Forests are a source of oxygen, as well as they have some features that can ensure ecological balance.  For example, forests are one of the major factors that prevent landslides, erosion processes, flood events, as well as protecting land resources, hydrological resources and optimization micro climatic condition. Decreasing of forest stock affects the fauna directly. There are some factors that impact decreasing of forest resources, for example, settlements, industry and forest supply and etcetera. Forest fires occurring in different parts of the world every year eradicated acres of forest stock. The formation of forest fires is influenced by factors such as climate, anthropogenic and topological effects. Research area is district of Gabala, which is situated at south slopes of Greater Caucasus. Gabala is distinguished by the abundance of forest resources in the territory of Azerbaijan, which is poorly provided with forest reserves. 32405.15 hectares of this district  are covered with forests. Taking into account that 40% of the fire incidents that occurred on the southern slope of the Greater Caucasus in 2021 and 2022 took place here, this place was taken as a research area. Wildfire hazard and risk assessment and fire risk zonation, anthropogenic and topological effects are considered in this article and mapping had been done.  The resulting values were classified according to the risk group and the results were compared with the fire area data. As a result of the comparison, was not found fire process in the categories of no risk or low risk. 90% of fire incidents could be classified as medium risk, high risk and critic high-risk categories. Consequently, this is an indicator of the validity of the selected parameters and the conducted assessment