National-scale spatiotemporal patterns of vegetation fire occurrences using MODIS satellite data
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PubMed
Abstract
As the risk of climate change increases, robust fire monitoring methods become critical for
fire management purposes. National-scale spatiotemporal patterns of the fires and how
they relate to vegetation and environmental conditions are not well understood in Zimbabwe.
This paper presents a spatially explicit method combining satellite data and spatial statistics
in detecting spatiotemporal patterns of fires in Zimbabwe. The Emerging Hot Spot
Analysis method was utilized to detect statistically significant spatiotemporal patterns of fire
occurrence between the years 2002 and 2021. Statistical analysis was done to determine
the association between the spatiotemporal patterns and some environmental variables
such as topography, land cover, land use, ecoregions and precipitation. The highest number
of fires occurred in September, coinciding with Zimbabwe’s observed fire season. The number
of fires significantly varied among seasons, with the hot and dry season (August to October)
recording the highest fire counts. Additionally, although June, July and November are
not part of the official fire season in Zimbabwe, the fire counts recorded for these months
were relatively high. This new information has therefore shown the need for revision of the
fire season in Zimbabwe. The northern regions were characterized by persistent, oscillating,
diminishing and historical spatiotemporal fire hotspots. Agroecological regions IIa and IIb
and the Southern Miombo bushveld ecoregion were the most fire-prone areas. The research
findings also revealed new critical information about the spatiotemporal fire patterns in various
terrestrial ecoregions, land cover, land use, precipitation and topography and
highlighted potential areas for effective fire management strategies.
Description
Keywords
Climate, Zimbabwe, Fires, Vegitation
Citation
Mupfiga UN, Mutanga O, Dube T (2024) National-scale spatiotemporal patterns of vegetation fire occurrences using MODIS satellite data. PLoS ONE 19(3): e0297309.