Forest fire risk assessment in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba: the role of anthropic and meteorological factors

Abstract

An accurate evaluation of forests fire risks was performed for the province of Ciego de Ávila, which is located in the central part of Cuba (Fig. 1). This province highlights because of socioeconomic activities like agriculture, but also for having an important natural protected area named ‘‘Gran Humedal del Norte’’; one of the most important ecosystems in the country. A government authority’s instruction is to planning and preparing the country against natural disasters; hence, the aim of this study is to identify the risk of forest fire in each one of the ten municipalities of the province. To do it was implemented the methodological guidelines proposed by the Risk Assessment Group of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environmental Sciences (CITMA). This methodology is based on the calculus of two variables: hazard and vulnerability, to finally obtain the risk. The hazard level is calculated based on the susceptibility and the frequency of forest fires. The frequency is obtained like the number of times a box (depends on the map scale) is affected by a fire, while the susceptibility depends on the type of vegetation, the slope of the terrain, a water stress index, the human factor and storms lightning. In the other hand, the total vulnerability is a function of the kind of factors exposed to forest fires. The following vulnerability classifications were considered in this study: Structural (evaluates the degree of exposure of homes, facilities and technical networks); Non Structural (evaluates the degree of exposure of the vegetation cover according to the surface covered and the dangerousness of the combustible material); Functional (evaluates the preparation of the territory and the capacity of response of the professional firefighters and of other entities or organisms, in case of occurrence of fires in rural areas); Social (evaluates the exposed population and their perception about this disaster); Economic (evaluates the economic losses in the forestry sector, beekeeping, livestock, and the implementation of the disaster reduction budget) and Ecological (evaluates the protection and conservation of biodiversity in exposed areas). The work was performed at seasonal scale, for the dry (November – April) and rainy season (May – October) along the period 2008 – 2014. This range of years was selected because of the major information regarding forest fires occurrence. The methodology here utilized considered the climatological water stress conditions and wind direction for every season. Taking into account that dry conditions and drought episodes may increase the occurrence of forest fires we also decided to utilize the Standardized Precipitation & Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to diagnose the state of the drought every month during the period of study. This index has the ability to diagnose at different temporal scales the water balance conditions but also considers the role of temperature through its influence on potential evapotranspiration. A precise analysis was also performed to investigate the direction and velocity of the predominant wind and the sea breeze regime; in order to support the mitigation plans.