The Terai ecoregion of the Himalayan foothills is among the most fire-affected ecosystems in the Indian sub-continent. Although most of the Terai has already been lost to agriculture and urbanization, the few remaining native habitats are strictly protected due to their high biodiversity and ecological importance. The use of fires to maintain vegetation and wildlife habitat in these protected areas is an integral part of forest management. Although fires are initiated by forest managers or local people, their eventual spread and behaviour are not controlled. We hypothesize that distributions of fires are determined by several direct and indirect drivers like fuel load, fuel moisture content, presence of natural or artificial fire breaks, and climatic attributes of precipitation and temperature. Using the moderate-resolution (375m) satellite sensor-based data we studied the environmental influence on the spatial-temporal patterns of fire events over 18 years (2000-2018) in a 519 km² protected area in northeastern India. The park has a mosaic of vegetation formations – including dry and swampy alluvial grassland, early successional woodland, and moist tropical forest. Despite high rainfall, there is an intense dry season that renders the herbaceous vegetation susceptible to fires. Using spatial and spatial-temporal Poisson regression models in a rigorous conditional autoregressive Bayesian framework, we found that net primary productivity (a proxy of vegetation type and fuel load), distance to roads (a measure of human influence), elevation (through its influence on floods and vegetation type), and river area extent (by determining the area under vegetation) had a significant influence on the spatial distributions of fires. The climatic signal on interannual variation in fires was weak, but dry season rainfall reduced fire incidence. The disproportionate distribution of fires adjacent to roads compared to the interior, and the repeated burning of some grassland patches need to be addressed in fire management.

喜马拉雅山麓地区的Terai生态区是印度次大陆受火灾影响最严重的生态系统之一。尽管Terai的大部分地区已因农业和城市化而流失，但由于其高度的生物多样性和生态重要性，剩下的少数本地栖息地受到严格保护。在这些保护区使用火势维持植被和野生动植物栖息地是森林管理的组成部分。尽管火灾是由森林经营者或当地居民引发的，但其最终蔓延和行为不受控制。我们假设火势的分布是由几个直接和间接的驱动因素决定的，例如燃料负荷，燃料含水量，是否存在自然或人工灭火，以及降水和温度的气候属性。^2个印度东北部的保护区。该公园的植被形成了马赛克-包括干燥和沼泽的冲积草地，早期演替林地和潮湿的热带森林。尽管降雨很高，但仍然有一个干燥的干旱季节，使草木植被易受火灾的影响。在严格的条件自回归贝叶斯框架中使用时空Poisson回归模型，我们发现净初级生产力（植被类型和燃料负荷的代理），到道路的距离（对人类影响的度量），海拔（通过其影响）洪水和植被类型）和河流面积（通过确定植被下的面积）对火灾的空间分布有重大影响。关于火灾年际变化的气候信号微弱，但是干旱季节的降雨减少了火灾的发生。与内部相比，道路附近的火灾分布不均，并且在火灾管理中需要解决一些草地斑块反复燃烧的问题。