Forest fire potential index for Navarra autonomic community (Spain)

This study presents the development of a Forest Fire Potential Index at a regional scale for the Autonomic Community of Navarra at 500 meters spatial resolution. The index developed is based on the Fire Potential Index (FPI) applied by Sebastián (2001) at European scale and designed originally by Burgan (1998). The FPI is a dynamic Forest Fire Potential Index based on fuel characteristics and moisture status. The FPI uses the extinction moisture from fuel type map, the ten-hour timelag dead fuel moisture from meteorological data (temperature and relative moisture) and green vegetation percentage from Relative Greenness Vegetation Index. This research investigates the suitability of NDWI derived from MODIS satellite images to assess fire potential, and compares it with NDVI. The study period lasts from February 2000 to December 2005. The output of the model ranges between 1 and 100 and it is updated every eight days. The result of this study shows the usefulness of MODIS SWIR information for characterizing fire potential dynamics at a regional scale. In the bioclimatic Mediterranean region average values of both indexes (FPINDVI and FPINDWI) explain the unimodal behaviour of forest fires typical of this area. In addition, both show a good correlation between forest fire potential and fires occurrence. In the Atlantic bioclimatic region FPINDWI explains better the bi-modal behaviour of forest fires than FPINDVI. Thus, this indicates that NDWI is a useful vegetation index for estimating forest fire potential in the Atlantic region.