A Study of the Effectiveness of the Composite Burn Index (CBI) in Assessing the Severity of Forest Soil Fires in Latakia Governorate

Abstract

The intensity of fires is a determining factor in assessing the condition of the region after the fire, as the fires that occurred on 10-9/10/2020 were extremely painful after they turned the green cover in our coastal mountains into ashes. The damage was not limited to forest wealth, as it was for agricultural soils, considering the soil is the basis for the return and renewal of forest wealth and the preservation of biodiversity as well as the sustainability of agricultural production. This research aimed to evaluate the impact of fire intensity on soil properties in a field manner using the Composite burn Index (CBI), where 30 sites exposed to fire were identified, distributed over the four regions of Latakia Governorate (Latakia region, Al-Qardaha region, Al-Haffa region, and Jableh region). CBI was applied two weeks after the outbreak of fires in a total of 250 plots (100 m diameter) depending on the substrate, where we evaluated the consumption of forest litter, ash color and coal depth as visual indicators in each plot. At the same time, 30 Soil samples from the studied sites were collected from a depth of (0-30 cm) to analyze their organic carbon content, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of using the composite indicator in determining this in a field manner, taking into account the collection of control samples from sites that were not exposed to fire. The results of the study showed that Latakia governorate witnessed fires that were distributed between very low (1-0.5), low (1-1.5), medium (2-1.5), high (2-2.4), and very high (2.4-2.7), where the highest value of the composite index was 2.7 in Beit Zantout, in the Qardaha region. On the other hand, the study showed a significant decrease in the organic carbon content of the soil in the burned sites compared to the unburned sites, as the highest percentage of decrease was (50.33%) immediately after two weeks of the outbreak of fires also in Beit Zantout in the Qardaha region. Hence, the composite indicator was able to give a correct initial assessment of the deterioration of the soil organic carbon content according to the intensity of the fire.

Keywords

• composite burn index (cbi) - forest soils - fire intensity - latakia governorate.