Factors explaining forest fires in the Serik and Tasagil forest provinces (SW Anatolia - Turkey)
| Authors: | Ufuk Cosgun, Armando González-Cabán |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Type: | General Technical Report |
| Station: | Pacific Southwest Research Station |
| Source: | Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-261 (English). Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: 145-165. |
Abstract
This study was undertaken to determine the factors causing forest fires in Serik and Tasagil forest provinces of Antalya Forest Regional Directory in Turkey. These neighboring forest provinces including 78 forest villages was the site of one of the biggest forest fires in the Turkish Recorded History affecting about 15000 hectares. The area is also known to have a high frequency of forest fires.
To accomplish this goal, we gathered information on 21 forest related characteristics, 22 socioeconomic factors for the years from 1998-2010, fire number, and two different index derived by climatic factors. Socioeconomic factors were obtained by scanning the local, regional and national registrations in different databases. All these 43 factors belonging to 78 forest villages were used for the analysis. Different multi numerical analysis techniques such as factor analyzes, cluster analysis and multi regression analysis were applied to reveal the most important factor groups explaining fires in the region. The analyses were done separately for Tasagil and Serik forest provinces.
Four factor groups including eleven variables were selected for the Tasagil forest province. These factors groups explained 85 % of the total variance. Similarly, for Serik forest province, four factor groups containing fourteen variables were determined. These groups explained 87% of the total variance. The villages of Tasagil and Serik provinces were classified according to these factor groups, which could be a useful tool for the fire management in the region.