JOINT USE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS FOR MONITORING AND INVENTORYING FOREST FIRES: CASE OF THE SAIDA PROVINCE, ALGERIAArabi Zohra and Chalane FatihaAbstract The forest fire is in the wilaya of Saida, the major factor in the destruction of forest ecosystems already weakened by the extreme conditions of drought. This situation is explained by the nature of the main dominant forest species, which are extremely fragile and combustible in the face of fire. The present study attempts to demonstrate a synthetic mapping model on susceptibility to forest fires under a geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing. For this, several factors favoring the initiation and propagation of fires were taken into consideration such as: slope, NDVI vegetation index, combustibility and density of vegetation. After combining these factor maps using the two-by-two principle, a forest fire sensitivity map was produced. The forest fire vulnerability map obtained shows four (04) classes of fire sensitivity: very low, low, medium, high and very high. The results show that more than 16,4% of the total surface area of the study area has a very high sensitivity to fire and that more than 69,04%) is sensitive to this phenomenon. |