Fire Spread Simulation Modeling to Assess Wildfire Hazard and Exposure to Communities in Northern Iran

We analyzed wildfire hazard profiles across the Hyrcanian temperate forests of northern Iran (Guilan Province) by simulating a large set of wildfires with FlamMap MTT. We first derived geospatial data on terrain, fuel models, weather conditions, and historical wildfire occurrence (1992–2022) for the study area. We stratified fire weather conditions and fuel moisture based on the bioclimatic classification of the study area, considering observed extreme fire weather, as well as observed and random fire ignition locations for the simulations. The wildfire simulations were used to estimate burn probability (BP), conditional flame length (CFL), fire size (FS), and crown fire probability (CFP). BP ranged from 0 to 5.0 × 10−2, with mean values of 1.3 × 10−3 and 1.1 × 10−3 for observed and random scenarios, respectively. The mean value of CFL from random ignition simulations (0.78 m) was substantially higher than that obtained in the observed ignition simulations (0.54 m), ranging from 0 to 6.75 m. We evidenced significant differences between observed and random ignition simulations for all wildfire hazard metrics. The highest wildfire hazard profiles were observed in the Cold-Mountainous bioclimatic zone under the random ignition simulations. On average, the annual number of anthropic structures threatened by wildfires ranged from 97 (observed scenario) to 123 (random scenario). This research provides detailed and spatially explicit fire hazard and exposure maps to inform fire modeling, land management, and policy actions.