Mapping Fire Susceptibility of the South Carolina Coastal Plain

Wildfires are a natural hazard that have occurred across the world, throughout time. Regions prone to wildfires have been experiencing changes in their fire regimes. Not only has the fire season length increased, but the fires themselves are increasing in frequency and intensity. Wildfire research has been limited for the state of South Carolina, raising concerns along with global warming and population growth. Global warming is likely to become more extreme, which can lead to droughts becoming more frequent and lasting for longer periods of time. According to the 2020 census, South Carolina was the 10th fastest-growing state, which is significant because there is an increased chance of human ignited wildfires in the increased wildland urban interface areas. The goal of this research is to utilize geospatial technologies and analytic hierarchy processes to map the fire susceptibility geographically across the South Carolina Coastal Plain. Utilizing the historical wildfire dataset in the period of 2003- 2023, four criteria groups (anthropogenic, climatic, terrain, and vegetation) and twelve variables were explored to examine the environmental influences on fire incidence (represented by burning areas in this study). Five out of the twelve variables (roads, compound topographic index, fire behavior fuel model, normalized difference vegetation index, and fuel vegetation cover) were deemed suitable to establish the fire susceptibility model. The Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve score of 0.621, which indicated the fire susceptibility model was poor. However, upon the extracted fire susceptibility map, several large wildfire clusters (hotspots) were identified across the South Carolina Coastal Plain, which may deserve further investigation to support the state’s wildfire monitoring and management.