A Geographical Information System for Fire Management by the Western Cape Nature Conservation Board

[摘要] A multitude of unique fauna and flora exist within the Western Cape of South Africa.Fire plays an intricate role in the conservation and extinction of many of thesespecies. It is therefore imperative to understand this delicate relationship in order tohelp preserve the province's uniquely balanced ecosystem.The Western Cape Nature Conservation Board (WCNCB) expressed the need for asystem that would allow reserve managers to produce basic fire frequency and veldage maps with considerable ease. These maps are needed for intelligent decisionmakingregarding the management of veldfires. Information concerning vegetationand historical veldfires in the Western Cape, collected over a period of 50 years existin tabular format in databases of the WCNCB. Some of these tables contain spatialinformation elements, such as areas affected by fires. Tabular data with spatialelements can be converted to a geographical information system (GIS) format,extracting value previously shielded from the user. Using GIS techniques and theprogramming language Avenue, two tools with powerful decision-making qualitieswere created to extract value from these datasets.One tool shows the fire history of a specified area as a digital map. This map showsareas with varying occurrences of fires over time, thereby highlighting hot spotswithin the specified location. The ability to view various fire scar datasets spatiallyover a specified period, as opposed to records in a table, enables the user tounderstand the extent to which areas have been repeatedly exposed to fire and quicklyidentify areas most affected.The second tool shows vegetation age in a similar fashion, allowing the user to see thecurrent spatial distribution of vegetation and its age. Knowledge about the age ofindigenous vegetation, such as fynbos, in a predetermined area, facilitates the reservemanager in decisions related to block burning. This is an accepted practise in areaswhere vegetation requires fire to stimulate germination. Both tools provide decisionmakingsupport to reserve managers regarding the most suitable course of action interms of the implementation of a proactive or passive approach towards fires. This study satisfies the needs of the WCNCB by exploring the hidden value withintheir datasets. GIS supported by the programming language, Avenue, wassuccessfully utilised in the development of a system capable of extracting informationfrom current datasets to support reserve managers in their critical decision-makingprocesses.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University