USING MACHINE LEARNING COUPLED WITH REMOTE SENSING FOR FOREST FIRE SUSCEPTIBILITY MAPPING. CASE STUDY TETOUAN PROVINCE, NORTHERN MOROCCO

Abstract. Currently there is a public awareness to protect the environment especially forest ecosystems and the forest fire dilemma has become a topic of intense research around the world. In this setting, this study evaluates forest fire susceptibility (FFS) in northern Morocco using three geographic information system (GIS) based on machine learning algorithms: XGBoost (XGB), Random Forest (RF), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). To this effect, a Geographic Information System (GIS) database was developed involving ten independent causal factors (elevation, aspect, slope, distance to roads, distance to residential areas, land cover, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), rainfall, temperature and wind speed) and 345 fire pixels. The 345 pixels were split into two sets for training (70%) and validation (30%) and the spatial relationships between factors affecting FFs and fire pixels was analyzed using XGB, RF, and SVM models to generate the FFS maps. The effectiveness of the models was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic curve, the area under the curve (AUC), and several statistical measures. The results of the three models hinted that XGBoost had the highest performance (AUC = 0.856), followed by RF (AUC) = 0.827), and SVM (AUC = 0.803) in the forecasting of the forest fire. The resulting FFS maps areas can provide crucial support for the management of Mediterranean forest ecosystems and can enhance the effectiveness of planning and management of forest resources and ecological balances in these areas.