FOREST FIRES IN THE FOCUS OF CLUSTER ANALYSIS: ECOSYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS THROUGH THE PRISM OF VOSVIEWER

Abstract

Wildfire research is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses ecological, climatic, technological,and management aspects. To analyze this complex topic, modern science uses knowledge visualization tools, such as VOSviewer, which allow analyzing large amounts of scientific data and identifying relationships between key concepts and research trends. The information base of the research wasthe Web of Science (WoS) abstract scientometric database of scientific publications using the keywords “forest fires”. Based on this query, a set of scientific publications covering the research period 1971–2025 was formed. To visualize the data from the Web of Science bibliographic database, VOSviewer,a software tool for creating maps based on freely available network data, was used. Based onthe results of the visualization, the following sectors were identified: red – focuses on the ecological and biological aspects of forest fires, emphasizing the role of fires in maintaining ecosystem balance, conserving biodiversity and restoring natural environments; blue – reflects technological aspects, including forecasting, monitoring and managing fires using modern tools such as GIS, remote sensing and deep learning; green – focuses on environmental management, restoration of ecosystemsand increasing their resilience to future fires; yellow – related to global impacts of fires, such as climate change, carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation; purple – highlights the impact of fires on air quality, public health and chemical processes associated with pollution. Promising areas for further research include ecological aspects (deepening knowledge of the impact of fires on biodiversity, elemental cycles, and ecosystem restoration), technological solutions (integration of artificial intelligence, satellite technologies, and predictive models for fire management), and climate impacts (assessing the roleof fires in climate change and developing global mitigation strategies), socio-environmental approaches(studying the impact of fires on public health, especially vulnerable groups, and developing protection strategies), and, given the Russian invasion, the consequences of military operations, as the fires caused by them have unique characteristics that require detailed analysis (monitoring, research on emissions, development of strategies for restoring forest ecosystems).