Modeling fire danger prediction of Dadu Mountain area

The main purpose of the present study is to construct fire danger prediction models of Dadu mountain area where is dominated by grassland. We collected the fire records during 1991 to 2003 from Nantaoe Forestry District of Taiwan Forestry Bureau and Taichung County to analyze fire history of this area. In addition to fire records, fire weather data were also gathered from Taichung and Wuchi weather station of Central Weather Bureau. By adopting Logistic modeling, two regression models which used fire record as the depend variable, and 20 weather variables as the independent variables, were constructed. The results show that fire regime in Dadu Mountain is a short fire regime type. Grassland type and the climate pattern are the two key factors to form this fire regime. The two regression models have high prediction power with R2=0.811(evaporation dependent variables) and R2=0.754(drought dependent variables). Though the two models can predict high fire danger probability, they have missed to predict those fires related to light precipitation effect and special human activities during the wet season.