Abstract: Several factors are involved in forest fire occurrence and these parameters are divided into environment, human and land. Research showed that forest fires had significant correlation with meteorological and topographical variables. So, one way to prevent and control forest fire is its prediction based on effective factors including climatic ones (precipitation, air temperature and wind speed and direction), land use, elevation, slope and its direction and human activities (distance from roads and residential and agricultural land). In this study, risk zoning map of forest fires in Golestan province, Iran, was prepared considering all above factors. Zoning maps of these parameters were overlaid by classification weighted method. In order to risk zoning map verification, this map was matched with the fire events map in recent years in province. Results showed that safe, low, moderate, high and very high fire risk zones covered 66, 14.5, 15.3, 4.1 and 0.1 percent of province land, respectively. Also, Bandar Torkeman, Gomishan and Agh-ghalla counties had no risky zone while other counties have risky zone with various degrees of fire. In aspect of county distribution, most percent of very risk zone belonged to Kalaleh (550 ha) and Maraveh Tappeh (360 ha) and risk zone to Kalaleh (36,110 ha), Galikesh (15,269 ha), Maraveh Tappeh (14,398 ha), Minoodasht (13,293 ha) and Azadshahr (2839 ha). Acceptable accuracy of the fire risk zoning map was found because a relative good compliance between the fire risk zoning map and fire distribution map in recent years.
Keywords: Distance, elevation, precipitation, slope, temperature
