Articles Information
Journal of Environment Protection and Sustainable Development, Vol.1, No.4, Sep. 2015, Pub. Date: Sep. 26, 2015
Assessment of Fire Hazard Zones in the Forest Landscapes in Simitli Municipality (Bulgaria)
Pages: 225-233 Views: 3111 Downloads: 1256
Authors
[01]
Daniela Avetisyan, Department of Aerospace Information, Space Research and Technology Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
[02]
Roumen Nedkov, Department of Aerospace Information, Space Research and Technology Institute, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Abstract
Forest landscapes provide a wide variety of ecosystem services, part of which is their regulating function, expressed by prevention of natural hazard and climate changes regulation. In arid regions, where a large part of Simitli Municipality is located, major threat for the forest ecosystems and landscapes are wildfires. In the present study, the fire hazard zones in the forest landscapes in Simitli Municipality were determined and assessed. An elaborate landscape map on different hierarchical levels was created. Each level was assigned a weight coefficient, defining its significance for increase in landscape vulnerability to wildfires. The vegetation condition by applying vegetation indices was also taken into account.
Keywords
Landscapes, Fire Hazard Zones, Remote Sensing, GIS, Vegetation Indices, Southwestern Bulgaria
References
[01]
Avetisyan, D, Borissova, B, Nedkov R. (2015) Determination of the Landscapes Regulation Capacity and Their Role in the Prevention of Catastrophic Events: A Case Study from the Lom River Upper Valley, Bulgaria. International Conference “Sustainable Mountain Regions: Make Them Work”, Borovets, Bulgaria (14 – 16 May 2015) in book “Challenges and Perspectives in Southeastern Europe”. Springer. (in press).
[02]
Bondev, I, (1991). The Vegetation of Bulgaria. Kliment Ohridski. (in Bulgarian).
[03]
Burkhard, B., F., Kroll, F., Müller, W., Windhorst. (2009) Landscapes capacities to provide ecosystem services–a concept for land-cover based assessments. Landscape Online 15, pp. 1–22.
[04]
Burkhard, B., F., Kroll, S., Nedkov, F., Müller (2012) Mapping ecosystem service supply, demand and budgets. Ecological Indicators 21, pp. 17–29.
[05]
Dillon, M, McNellie, M, Oliver, I, (2011). Assessing the Extent and Condition of Native Vegetation in NSW. Monitoring, evaluation and reporting program. Technical report series, Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney.
[06]
Gao, Bo-cai, (1996). NDWI – A Normalized Difference Water Index for Remote Sensing of Vegetation Liquid Water from Space. Remote sensing of Environment; Volume 58, Issue 3, December, 257 – 266.
[07]
Jensen, J.R, (2000). Remote Sensing of the Environment: An Earth Resource Perspective. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
[08]
Jones H., Vaughan R. (2010) - “Remote sensing of vegetation. Priciples, techniques, and applications”, OXFORD University Press, ISBN: 978-0-19-920779-4.
[09]
Kogan, F, (1995). Droughts of the Late 1980s in the United States as Derived from NOAA Polar – Orbiting Sattelite Data. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
[10]
Nertan, A. T, Mihailescu, D, Irimescu A., (2013).Drought Monitoring Using NDVI and NDWI Indices Over Agricultural Area from Romania. EARSeL Conference '4th Workshop on Education and Training', Matera, Italy.
[11]
Nikolaev, V. A., Voronina, A. V., (1976). Landscape. Physical Geographical Regionalisation In: Kompleksnye Regional'nye Atlasy, Moscow, MGU. (in Russian).
[12]
Topliiski, D., (2006). Climate of Bulgaria. Sofia (in Bulgarian), ISBN-10:954-91939-1-8.
[13]
Velchev, A., Penin, R., Todorov, N., Konteva, M., (2011). Landscape Geography of Bulgaria. Bulvest 2000, Sofia., 236 p..
[14]
Wang, l. and. Qu, J. J. (2007). NMDI: a Normalized Multi-band Drought Index for Monitoring Soil and Vegetation Moisture with Satellite Remote Sensing. Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 34, Issue 20.