Abstract

Model of hazard of forest fires in Yucatan, Mexico.
Track: Wildland Fire Management
Authors: Ismael Hernández, Gustavo Perez

The State of Yucatán has a great potential of natural resources, and one of the major problems that it´s surface has are the forest fires. These represent one of the biggest impact threats which annually destroy some parts of communities in the ecosystem. In present study are integrated multicriteria analyses based on geospatial information. Assessment was made using Arc Map v10, where were identified and defined environmental attributes such as: fuel model, hotspots, index of drought, thickness of the organic soil horizon and frequency of hurricanes. The weight assigned at each information layer was using the analytic hierarchy process method (AHP). The result of the model is the sum of the values assigned for each of the attributes. Values were divided into four classes, the minimum (correspond to the low range 5,708 km²) medium (20,734 km²) and maximum values (high; 13,145 km², very high; 297.8 km²).