Spatial pattern prediction of forest wildfire susceptibility in Central Yunnan Province, China based on multivariate data

Abstract

Wildfires are an important disturbance factor in forest ecosystems. Assessing the probability of forest wildfires can assist in forest wildfire prevention, control, and supervision. The logistic regression model is widely used to forecast the probability, spatial patterns, and drivers of forest wildfires. This study used logistic regression to establish a spatial prediction model for forest wildfire susceptibility, which was applied to evaluate the risk of forest wildfires in Central Yunnan Province (CYP), China. A forest wildfire risk classification was implemented for CYP using forest burn scar data for 2001 to 2020 and the logistic spatial prediction model for forest wildfire susceptibility. Climate, vegetation, topographical, human activities, and location were selected as forest wildfire prediction variables. The results showed that: (1) The distributions of temperature, vegetation coverage, distance to water bodies, distance to roads, and precipitation were positively correlated with the occurrence of forest wildfires. Elevation, relative humidity, the global vegetation moisture index, wind speed, slope, latitude, and distance to residential areas were negatively correlated with the occurrence of forest wildfires. (2) The results of the logistic spatial prediction model for forest wildfire susceptibility showed a good fit to observed data, with an overall simulation probability of 81.6%. The optimal threshold for spatial prediction for forest wildfire susceptibility in CYP was determined to be 0.414. A significance level of a selected model variable of < 0.05 resulted in an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.882–0.890. (3) Forest wildfire prevention efforts should focus on Southwest Yuxi City and southern Qujing City since they accounted for a high proportion of the areas at high risk of forest wildfires. Other localities should adjust forest wildfire prevention measures according to local conditions and strengthen existing wildfire prevention and emergency resource planning and allocation. (4) Some factors contributing to forest wildfires where different among the different areas. Forest wildfire risk factors had different degrees of impact under different spatial and temporal scales. The spatial relationships between wildfire disasters and influencing factors should be established in areas with heterogeneous environmental conditions for the selection of relevant factors.