Analysis of cause and influence of meteorological elements in fire occurrences in production forests

Abstract

The amount and intensity of forest fires has been highlighted by the social, environmental and economic losses and impacts. Thus, the objective of this research was to identify the profile of forest fires as well as their causes and correlate the influence of meteorological elements under the occurrences of fires in production forests to direct the use of resources in prevention techniques and measures as well as structures to combat forest fires. The research had as subsidy the database of the historical series of 10 years of record of occurrence of Fires (ROIs) and meteorological elements from 45 meteorological stations of a company producing eucalyptus for cellulose, period from 2008 to 2017. According to the results, 91.40% of the 32,561 occurrences over the 10 years were originated by arsonists. Moreover, justified by the cause of the fire, the number of occurrences between the years analyzed presented moderate and low negative correlations, respectively, for relative humidity and amount of precipitation and negligible correlation for the average temperature. The monthly distribution of fires stood out because it was uniform throughout the year, since, although September and October presented the highest incidence of occurrences, they differed only from April to the level of 5% probability by the Tukey test. In this way, regions where the origin of forest fires is largely due to intentional and criminal action, the actions of prevention and combating of forest fires should be planned contemplating every month of the year.