Susceptibility of the Vegetation to Forest Fires in the Dry Forest of Ocaña—Colombia

According to the climate zoning proposed by Holdrige, Ocaña, in the department of Norte de Santander in Colombia, has a distribution of Dry Tropical Forest (Bs-T). This forest is threatened at the national level, so the Colombian state has been prioritized to restore and conserve it, since it provides a considerable number of ecosystem services and also, is key to the conservation of our biodiversity and the adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Forest fires have been a problem in the dry forest area of Ocaña, with a frequency of up to 13 fires per year in 2015 alone, according to the regional fire department. So far, fire management in the area has been lim-ited to emergency response, not prevention, because there is no institutional framework for fire risk management at the local level. The objective of this work is to identify the zones of vulnerability of the vegetation to forest fires in the Bs-T area of Ocaña. To do this, a protocol proposed by the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies—IDEAM has been used, which specifies that it is necessary to first have a coverage map, adapted according to certain coverages (Corine Land Cover Methodology) prioritized by the protocol, to later generate the maps of type, duration and load of fuels, which are subjected to a multi-criteria evaluation in GIS soft-ware, thus generating the map of vegetation susceptibility to fires. As a result, for the predominant fuel type and load, a high threat was identified, mainly to the east of the Bs-T distribution area, while the low threat per fuel life, has a greater representativeness in hectares and is displayed mainly to the southeast of this area. It is concluded that the threat due to the vulnerability of vegetation to fire in Bs-T in Ocaña is mainly moderate, representing an area of approximately 13,924 ha.