Estrategias de mitigación y prevención ante incendios forestales en zonas de alta y crítica susceptibilidad, en el Distrito Metropolitano de Quito, utilizando el programa FlamMap

Abstract

Forest fires in the Metropolitan District of Quito have occurred especially in the summer season, and are one of the main causes of environmental degradation. Such fires are a difficult problem for municipal authorities due to the lack of tools that help prevent, mitigate and respond effectively to these events. This work focuses on generating simulations of forest fires in areas of high and critical susceptibility of the DMQ to respond with applicable mitigation measures, defining 9 areas that correspond to the level of susceptibility required based on the susceptibilities map of the year 2019. The simulation was carried out using the FlamMap program because it is designed to map the spread of fire, first, the topographic map of Ecuador obtained from IGM was worked on. In addition to these maps, it is necessary to know the vegetation cover and when carrying out this work, the limited information available on vegetable fuels was evidenced, for this reason the MAGAP land use and cover map was adapted to the Scott-Burgan fuel model, with this information and lcp file was generated. The lcp file added to 2019 meteorological data obtained from 5 REMMAQ stations allow the simulation to be created in FlamMap. This work also applies mitigation measures that significantly reduce the percentage of extension of the fire, to mention an example in Pasochoa, the fire was reduced by 75%, due to the application of fire barriers that contain roads, and other natural components such as rocks or bodies. of water, these attributes were obtained from OSM. The FlamMap program in this work was evaluated by comparing a fire occurred vs. the generated simulation, the error coefficient corresponds to 0.78.