Estudio de variabilidad climática e incendios forestales en el cantón Riobamba, provincia de Chimborazo durante el período 2015-2019.

Abstract

The objective of this research was to study climate variability and forest fires in Riobamba Canton for the period 2015 to 2019, climatological information from the agrometeorological station of the Escuela Superior Politecnica de Chimborazo was analyzed and determined the statistical relationship between forest fires and the meteorological variables of air temperature, relative humidity and precipitation. A daily and monthly descriptive analysis of the meteorological variables and for the forest fire variables, a monthly, annual and locality, the relationship between the variables was determined by means of the nonparametric correlation coefficient of Spearman's, considering a 5% probability of significance. Data processing was carried out using Microsoft Excel and statistical analysis with the IBM SPSS Statistic software version 22. The results showed that the annual distribution of meteorological variables has a direct or inverse relationship with the distribution of fire occurrences and vegetation cover burned in the canton. Regardless of the above, the correlations between meteorological variables and forest fires were very low. September is the most favorable month for the occurrence of forest fires. In order to explore future lines of research, it is necessary to record all types of data to obtain accurate information and thus improve the prevention of forest fires.