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Fire Distribution in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo in 2015 with Special Emphasis on Peatland Fires

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the spatio-temporal distribution of vegetation fires in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo in the severe El Niño year of 2015, concentrating on the distribution of fires between mineral soils and peatland areas, and between land cover types in peatland areas. The results reveal that 53% of all Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire detections were recorded in peatlands that cover only 12% of the study area. However, fire occurrence in the peatland areas was highly dependent on land cover type. Pristine peat swamp forests (PSF) experienced only marginal fire activity (30 fire detections per 1000 km2) compared to deforested undeveloped peatlands (831–915 fire detections per 1000 km2). Our results also highlight the extreme fire vulnerability of the southern Sumatran and Bornean peatlands under strong El Niño conditions: 71% of all peatland hotspots were detected in the provinces of South Sumatra and Central Kalimantan, which contain 29% of peatlands in the study area. Degraded PSF and all deforested peatland land cover types, including managed areas, in the two provinces were severely affected, demonstrating how difficult it is to protect even managed drained agricultural areas from unwanted fires during dry periods. Our results thereby advocate rewetting and rehabilitation as the primary management option for highly fire prone degraded undeveloped peatland areas, whenever feasible, as a means to reduce fire risk during future dry episodes.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Susan Page from the University of Leicester for valuable comments on an early version of this manuscript.

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  1. Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (CRISP), National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, Singapore

    Jukka Miettinen, Chenghua Shi & Soo Chin Liew

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  1. Jukka Miettinen
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Correspondence to Jukka Miettinen.

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Miettinen, J., Shi, C. & Liew, S.C. Fire Distribution in Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo in 2015 with Special Emphasis on Peatland Fires. Environmental Management 60, 747–757 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-017-0911-7

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