Due to their increasing frequency wildfires and the area burned in natural areas, wildfires are becoming increasingly challenging to control. Firebreaks are an effective method to stop the spread of wildfires. To find the optimal allocation of firebreaks, a weight-linear combination (WLC) with an AHP fuzzy method was used to allocate optimum fuel breaks networks in the Golestan National Park in northeastern Iran. The effective factors that may impact the designing of firebreaks, including climate, topography, fuel, and fire behavior characteristics, were determined. The WindNinja simulator was used to create wind direction and speed layers based on the prevailing wind direction (250°) and three wind-speed scenarios (low = 6, medium = 12, and high = 18 mph). FlamMap (basic FB and MTT algorithms) was used to predict potential characteristics of fire behavior, including burn probability, rate of spread, flame length, and fireline intensity, under constant weather and fuel moisture conditions, using historic ignition points in the most recent ten years in the study area. Furthermore, the suitability map of the fuel-break allocation was determined by the AHP weights and the weighted linear combination (WLC) method and was considered effective (Table 1).
Table 1.
Final weights of effective criteria for allocating fire break network.
The firebreaks network was designed and allocated to the study area based on the suitability firebreak allocation map. To evaluate firebreaks performance across the landscape, four historical large fires (>100 ha) were simulated to investigate the effectiveness of the firebreaks with the Kappa coefficient corresponding index. An analysis of the AHP questionnaire showed that the fuel characteristics, the distance of barriers, and wind factors are the most effective criteria in firebreak allocation, with an inconsistency rate of 0.02. In addition, the evaluation of the suggested firebreaks showed the ability of fire breaks to stop the spread of fire (Kappa coefficient: 0.50, 0.43, 0.48, 0.61) (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Effect of suggested fuel breaks network on fire spread.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, M.W.A.K. and S.S.-J.; methodology, M.W.A.K. and R.J.; software, M.W.A.K.; validation, M.W.A.K., R.J. and S.S.-J.; formal analysis, M.W.A.K. and R.J.; investigation, M.W.A.K.; resources, M.W.A.K.; data curation, M.W.A.K.; writing—original draft preparation, M.W.A.K.; writing—review and editing, M.W.A.K., R.J. and S.S.-J.; visualization, M.W.A.K.; supervision, S.S.-J.; project administration, S.S.-J.; funding acquisition, M.W.A.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. |
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).