Forest Fire Risk Zoning in Natural Protected Areas: São Joaquim National Park/ Santa Catarina, Brazil

Abstract

Fires in Protected Areas impact the environment, which brings damaging consequences to biodiversity, being one of the major worries to their managers. How can these events be avoided? By applying geoprocessing techniques and spatial data relative to the topics: human presence, vegetation cover and land use, prevailing winds, slopes, hill orientation, and fuel material. Calculating different weights according to type and influence of the afore mentioned variables, we created a forest fire risk zoning map for Parque Nacional de São Joaquim, Santa Catarina, Brazil. The Park is inserted in the Atlantic Forest biome and its vegetation types are Araucaria forest, rainforest, nebulous woods, and grasslands, and for its zoning map, six fire risk classes were defined (extreme, very high, high, moderate, low, and none). We concluded that 43,91% of the Park is in the high or very high-risk grades while 2,54% is at extreme risk. The variable that most influenced the definition of classes was human presence. Even though fire prevention measures have not been taken due to the lack of resources, following the proposed zoning map, we understand that Protected Area’s managers of similar characteristics to PNSJ should apply this method to identify their critical areas related to the occurrence of forest fires.