Sneha Narayan

What environmental factors are prominent in causing forest fires in the Montesinho and Algerian forests?

Started June 5, 2024

Abstract or project description

Forest fires are becoming more common due to increased temperatures from global warming. According to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), in 2022, 66,225 fires in the U.S. burned 7,534,403 acres of land. Data from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) indicates that in the last 10 years, around 82 million hectares of forests have been destroyed by wildfires worldwide. I will use a random forest classifier to predict if a forest fire will be likely, given certain environmental conditions. A random forest classifier uses an ensemble of decision trees—which ask a series of binary questions to split the data—to determine whether a fire is likely, and displays which factors are most important in making this decision. My model achieves _____% accuracy in predicting whether a forest fire occurs given a set of environmental conditions. Knowing the prominent factors responsible for wildfire spread is useful to form preventative measures so that we do not reach those conditions. In the future, we can compare forest fire data from more forests around the world to get a holistic view of the environmental factors that cause forest fires.