Risco de incêndios associado a mudanças da paisagem e eventos climáticos na Mata Atlântica

Abstract

Human influence on climate change has increased the occurrence of extreme events and made heat waves and droughts more frequent and severe, which leads to an increase in the number of forest fires. This work aims to develop a model using the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model (ARIMA) to assess the danger of forest fires occurring for past and future climatic periods, as a function of landscape change and climatic events in the State of Rio de Janeiro in the future; to provide information that serve as subsidy for the creation of policies that aim to prevent or minimize its occurrence. Images from the Thematic Mapper sensor and the Enhanced Thematic Mapper sensor were used in the period from 1985 to 2015 in order to classify them as anthropogenic area and forest. A set of meteorological variables on daily and monthly scale for the period from 1985 to 2015 was used to calculate the F index on a monthly scale. ARIMA was used to simulate observed and future F index data up to the year 2030. The results show higher values of the Normalized Difference Fraction Index (NDFI) in areas to the south and southwest of the state, coinciding with the areas with the greatest predominance of Atlantic Forest. The most degraded regions are in the northeast and north and the year 2000 had the largest area of degraded forest. By analyzing the F index for the past, it was possible to observe a gradual increase in fires, which were associated with the occurrence of extreme events, mainly La Niña. The use of ARIMA modeling allowed us to identify that there was a change from high to very high class regarding the fire hazard of the past and future. In 2030, the minimum value of the F index reached 2.98, being considered very high in May and June. Analyzing the entire future period monthly, the highest fire hazard values were found in the months of August and September. It is important that measures are taken to minimize the effects of climate change, as such changes cause more extreme events to occur, which in turn cause more fires.