Trend Analysis of Forest Fire in Pahang, Malaysia from 2001-2021 with Google Earth Engine Platform

Abstract

Remote sensing imagery is one of the cost-efficient solutions to observe forest fire occurrence in a particular region. With the accessibility of more public remote sensing data, researchers and field experts can exploit the data to perform experimental analyses. In this paper, the entire state of Pahang in Malaysia has been selected to perform the fire activity trend analysis using the FIRMS hotspots public remote sensing dataset. The region is chosen because it has the largest forest reserve in Peninsular Malaysia and many fire incidences had been reported since 1998. The Google Earth Engine big data platform specifically the 20-years FIRMS hotspots dataset from 1st January 2001 to 31st December 2021 was used to observe the temporal and spatial trend of fire incidents in Pahang. The temporal analysis enacted reveals that the month from February to April every year is the occasional strong fire season. This scenario can be surmised by the hot and dry seasons encountered. On the other hand, the spatial analysis affirms the south-eastern part of Pahang state, the district of Pekan to be extremely susceptible to fire when compared to other districts. Additionally, this analysis also uncovered several high-risk fire regions that are positioned in the district of Jerantut, Temerloh, Kuala Rompin, Bentong, Bera, and Kuantan. Through these analyses, early preparations to tackle the forest fire can undoubtedly inhibit or decrease the seriousness of the tragedy. In future, other datasets such as rainfall, temperature, landcover, etc. can be used jointly with the FIRMS hotspots dataset to further investigate the prominent factors which are responsible for a fire incident in the state of Pahang.