Indonesian Fires Research Articles

Forest Fire Mapping using Normalized Burned Ratio and Cloud Computing to Calculate the Losses Incurred in Mount Lawu, Magetan Regency

Forest and land fires in Indonesia are one of the most common disasters. Over time, Indonesia’s forests have experienced a decline, one of which is the result of forest and land fires. Forest and land fires can occur due to temperatures in the dry season that continue to increase. Utilization of remote sensing technology can be used for mapping forest and fire areas, and can also be used as a reference for the government to carry out reforestation or reforestation processes in fire areas. The use of Multispectral Sensors in Sentinel 2 satellite imagery can be used to produce this research. This research takes a case study on Mount Lawu, Magetan Regency. Mount Lawu is one of the climbing tourist destinations that almost every year experiences forest and land fires. And the use of the Google Earth Engine platform that supports cloud computing to facilitate this research in accessing high data sources to process large geospatial data sets. For processing satellite images using the Normalized Burned Ratio (NBR) vegetation index processing algorithm. This research was conducted in 2018 and 2019. By using the Random Forest method, which is one of the applications of Machine Learning, it will produce several accurate results from the calculation results. The results of the calculation of the area of fire in 2018 were 284.88 hectares with a total loss of Rp 42,732,000.00 and in 2019 it was 146.03 hectares with a total loss of Rp 21,904,500. The results of this study are displayed on GEE Apps so that users can directly access the resulting data.

Development of Google Earth Engine Fire Weather Index Calculator for Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System

Tropical peatlands make up almost ten percent of the land surface in Indonesia, making peat fires detrimental not only for global atmospheric carbon levels, but also to public health and socioeconomic activities in the region. Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System (FDRS) was developed based on the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System (CFFWIS), using three different fuel codes and three indices representing fire behaviour. Daily Fire Weather Index (FWI) calculation is done by the Meteorological Climatological and Geophysical Agency (BMKG) with data from its synoptic weather stations network. Distribution of such weather stations are sparse, therefore this paper reports on the development of Fire Weather Index calculator on Google Earth Engine, using high resolution weather data, provided by weather model and remote-sensing open datasets. The resulting application is capable of generating daily maps of FWI components to be used by the Indonesian Fire Danger Rating System.

Assessing costs of Indonesian fires and the benefits of restoring peatland

Deforestation and drainage has made Indonesian peatlands susceptible to burning. Large fires occur regularly, destroying agricultural crops and forest, emitting large amounts of CO2 and air pollutants, resulting in adverse health effects. In order to reduce fire, the Indonesian government has committed to restore 2.49 Mha of degraded peatland, with an estimated cost of US$3.2-7 billion. Here we combine fire emissions and land cover data to estimate the 2015 fires, the largest in recent years, resulted in economic losses totalling US$28 billion, whilst the six largest fire events between 2004 and 2015 caused a total of US$93.9 billion in economic losses. We estimate that if restoration had already been completed, the area burned in 2015 would have been reduced by 6%, reducing CO2 emissions by 18%, and PM2.5 emissions by 24%, preventing 12,000 premature mortalities. Peatland restoration could have resulted in economic savings of US$8.4 billion for 2004–2015, making it a cost-effective strategy for reducing the impacts of peatland fires to the environment, climate and human health.

Investigating El Nino Southern Oscillation as the main driver of forest fire in Kalimantan

Strong El Nino events have been identified as major factors contributing to the forest fire in Indonesia. This is due to El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability has a distinct connection with tropical precipitation, mainly in Indonesia. El Nino years are typically drier, while La Nina events generally increase precipitation in Indonesia. Although very strong El Nino events have been connected with massive forest fires, fire continue to occur during the other phases of ENSO: La Nina and normal. Here, the research reports a time series of monthly counted fires in Kalimantan between the period 2001-2020 from MODIS fire hotspot and MODIS Burned Area products. The region is divided into three categories, Primary Intact Forest, Primary Degraded Forest and Outside Forest/ Deforested area. This categorization validates the location of the fire. Our results show that in general wildfires in Kalimantan follow a similar temporal pattern with Oceanic Nino Index (ONI), with several anomalies. If ONI is high, wildfires are more intense and vice versa. The wildfire appears almost every month and increases drastically in June-October of El Nino years. However, the proportion of wildfires in Primary Intact Forest are tiny and insignificant. The primary intact forest fire only appears in July-October and have a different pattern with wildfires in general. In conclusion, wildfires are highly correlated with El Nino but limited in primary intact forests. The fires dominantly appear in the deforested area, about 80%. The rest 20% are in degraded forest and only less than 1% in primary intact forest. Keywords: Deforested, degraded forest, ENSO, forest fire, ONI, primary intact forest

Impact of transboundary air pollution on service quality and consumer satisfaction

This paper exploits random and exogenous transboundary haze pollution in Singapore caused by forest fires in Indonesia to examine the causal effects of air pollution on firm productivity and consumer satisfaction. To measure firm productivity in the private sector, we use the subcategory review scores on service quality, and to estimate consumer satisfaction, we use the individual-level overall online review scores. We find that a significant reduction in consumer satisfaction related to increases in haze pollutant intensity is followed by a substantial rebound in consumer satisfaction for eight months after the haze completely dissipates. We also employ sentiment analysis to illuminate review data and to uncover the underlying mechanisms: the decreased consumer satisfaction during the haze shock is caused by changing consumer mood, rather than by decreases in service quality; after the haze dissipates, consumer satisfaction is quickly restored and soon exceeds the previous level due to substantial improvements in service quality.

Prototipe Pengaman Kebakaran Rumah Menggunakan Thermal Camera

80% of cases of building or house fires in Indonesia are caused by electrical short circuits. Currently, there are only MCB and ELCB devices protecting for building electrical installations, but these devices cannot protect the conditions that cause fires. In a short circuit, there will be heating of the short cable or device. In this study, researchers used a thermal camera that can be placed on an electrical panel to be able monitor the temperature of electrical panel which includes cables, MCB, or can be placed on other devices. When the detected object temperature exceeds a predetermined limit, the device will provide a warning in the form of sound and text and can automatically cut off electricity in the building's electricity network. This research produces a prototype of a power grid safety device using a Raspberry Pi that can be applied to buildings and objects that have the potential to emit excess heat that can cause fires. Systems it will be able to monitor, provide warnings and can automatically cut off the electricity network when the temperature of the observed object exceeds the specified limit and has the potential to emit excess heat which can cause a fire.

Historical study of peat protection policy to prevent forest and land fires in Indonesia (1990-2020)

This study aims to analyze Indonesia’s peat ecosystem protection policy in handling forest and land fires (karhutla). The qualitative research method employs a historical approach relating to the policies of the Republic of Indonesia’s government, including general policies and implementation policies. The limitation of the research is for three decades, namely 1990-2020. The primary data was collected through interviews, and the secondary data was collected through library research techniques and online data retrieval. The study’s findings show that, although forest and land fires have been occurring for a long time, specific protection regulations only began in the early 1990s. Following that, there was a shift in policy orientation from utilization to sustainable development. Indicators of achievement of policy implementation are seen through the area of burned land and the number of fire hotspots. It decreased in the last half-decade or post-karhutla in 2015 after going through policy corrections and actions, which changed the working paradigm of forest and land fire control from extinguishing prevention.

Analysis of climate indicator association with hotspots in Indonesia using heterogeneous correlation map

In several regions, land and forest fires of Indonesia occurred almost annually during the drought season. The severity of Indonesia's drought season is mainly influenced by the Australian Monsoon, local cloud formation controlled by Sea Surface Temperature (SST) around Indonesia. Moreover, it affects the severity of land and forest fires itself indirectly. This research aims to examine the association of the Australian Monsoon and local SST with land and forest fires in Indonesia. This research uses the Australian Monsoon Index (AUSMI) as an indicator for the Australian Monsoon and SST in the Karimata Strait and the Java Sea as indicators of local SST. An indicator of land and forest fires that will be used is the number of hotspots. A heterogeneous Correlation Map (HCM) is used to describe hotspots associated with AUSMI and local SST. The analysis shows that the east wind pattern of AUSMI associated with hotspots in Indonesia, especially in years when zonal winds enter an upward phase more slowly. Karimata Strait’s SST is associate with hotspots in the coastal part of Riau. Meanwhile, Java Sea’s SST is associate with hotspots in Lampung, South Sumatra, Jambi, and Kalimantan.

ESTABLISHMENT OF HONESTY PRINCIPLES APPLICATION POLICY IN FIRE INSURANCE AGREEMENTS IN INDONESIA

A form of insurance that guarantees loss and damage due to fire or the risk of its expansion affecting the object of coverage Objects that can be insured are in the form of your property in the form of residential buildings, shop houses, warehouses, factories, office buildings, hotels, household furniture, home appliances, machinery , merchandise, inventory of raw materials or finished goods, and so on in accordance with the Indonesian Fire Insurance Standard Policy (PSAKI). This insurance is also known as All Property Risk Insurance. In the law or insurance agreement there is the principle of honesty. the principle of honesty is the principle for every insurance agreement that is in the provisions of the Civil Code. Article 251 of the Commercial Code also regulates good faith or honesty, this is because insurance agreements have special characteristics, compared to other agreements in the Civil Code. The Insured must be aware that it has an obligation to provide true, honest and complete information regarding the condition of the insured object. Article 251 emphasizes that the principle of good faith or honesty is only for the insured. Insurance is one type of special agreement regulated in the Commercial Code as an agreement, so the provisions of the legal terms of an agreement in the Civil Code also apply to insurance agreements. The legal terms of an agreement are regulated in Article 1320 of the Civil Code, there are 4 valid conditions for an agreement, namely the agreement of the parties, the authority to act, certain objects, and lawful causes.

Civil Lawsuit Cases of Forest and Land Fires PT Kalista Alam (Study of Meulaboh District Court Decision Number 12/PDT.G/2012/PN.MBO)

Cases of forest fires in Indonesia are sometimes caused by human activities. Land clearing is often a reason to let up a lawsuit. The Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) has made every effort as a form of anticipation and to overcome cases of forest and land fires (karhutla) in Indonesia. One of the countermeasures is the filing of a civil lawsuit to the perpetrators of the karhutla. PT Kalista Alam as an example of various palm oil companies that are the target of civil lawsuits by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry over forest fires. The lawsuit is based on how much of an impact it has on various aspects, both from legal, environmental, and materiil aspects. This research uses quantitative research methods that are with a systematic normative juridical legal approach. There will be further explanations about the unlawful actions of forest and land fires committed by PT Kalista Alam in Aceh based on the perspective of civil law.

Forest and Peatland Fire Dynamics in South Sumatra Province

South Sumatra Province experiences forest and land fires every year. Peatland and human activity have caused this region to be more vulnerable to fire. In this study, we used annual mapping to describe the history of forest and land fires in Ogan Komering Ilir (OKI) District of South Sumatra to analyze fire trends during the 2015-2019 period. Hotspot data were obtained from Terra/Aqua MODIS satellite imagery at all confidence levels. Burned areas were identified using the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) Index, with data sources from Landsat 8 satellite imagery obtained from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). The highest number of hotspots were detected in 2015 (33,748), with 72% was located on peatland. Historical analysis of hotspot numbers, shows that the majority of burning occurs in September and October. This indicates that prevention activities must be carried out more intensively before these months. Linear regression between annual hotspot numbers and rainfall was not significant. Hotspots indicative of forest and land fire in OKI District were more influenced by human activities. The largest burned area (993,999 ha) occurred in 2015. The 2015 El Niño event triggered drought and worsened forest and land fires in Indonesia. Although no El- Niño conditions occurred in 2016-2018, fires continued to occur in OKI District, showing their independence from extreme drought. The fires occurring on peatlands burned a large area during 2015-2019 indicating that forest and land fires management must become a top priority in OKI District

Experts and resource users split over solutions to peatland fires

We provide empirical evidence that supports a commonly-held assumption: that experts’ appraisals of policy options are often very distinct from those of resource users most affected by those policy choices. We analyse perspectives about 40 policy options to address peatland fires in Indonesia, using a Q methodology approach to rank the options according to perceived effectiveness. Peatland fires in Indonesia are a long-standing and complex social-ecological challenge, where unsolved disagreements about policy options have profound implications for environmental governance, resulting in fires recurring and causing significant CO2 emissions and transboundary haze that affects the health of millions. We collected data from 219 respondents, covering twelve stakeholder categories, including small and large landholders, industrial farmers, scientists, local leaders and government officials. We identified the most representative response from each stakeholder category, and used hierarchical cluster analysis to explore the closeness/distance in perspectives among categories. The results show a particularly noticeable distinction between two broad groups, which we labelled as experts and resource users. Experts tend to prefer solutions that are centralised and largely transformative, whereas resource users favour more localised measures that are more compatible with business-as-usual. We discuss possible reasons for these differences, and their implications for environmental governance, including for how scientists engage in policy.

Law Enforcement Over Air Pollution to Bring about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)

Forest fires in Indonesia have led to devastating effects on the environment and caused air pollution, and this issue needs to be addressed immediately. The involvement of law enforcers should play an essential role in such a case since they serve as the guidelines to solve environmental issues according to Law Number 32 of 2009 concerning Environmental Management and Protection. This research seeks to analyze law enforcement over air pollution resulting from forest fires and the necessity to enforce environmental law to allow for sustainable development goals (SDGs). With normative-juridical methods, this research discovered that issues such as forest fires departed from poor environmental law enforcement in Indonesia that fails to bring about significant changes for sustainable development. This weakness has lured the people in Indonesia to overlook the current law, coupled with poor supervision given by the government apparatuses, precluding the environmental law from being appropriately enforced. People's participation is required to enforce the environmental law to tackle air pollution caused by forest fires. The condition is expected to improve with the agenda of fixing existing issues, particularly the environmental problems for better sustainable development.

Simard’s Fire Spread Model of Peatland in Kalimantan

Peatland fires in Indonesia have become a serious problem because they cause huge losses. Geographical factors of peatlands in the Kalimantan contribute to the difficullty of conventional fire fighting. The current solution is water bombing using a helicopter. Water bombing is expensive and has a high risk for the safety of fire fighters/helicopter crew so must be done with the correct calculation to fire position so that firefighting can work effectively and efficiently. Therefore, mathematical calculation of the fire position is very important. The position of the fire can be determined by knowing the rate of spread of the fire (Rate of Spread / ROS). In this study aims to calculate the rate of fire in peatlands along the Trans Kalimantan road between Palangka Raya and Pulang Pisau, Central Kalimantan using the simard’s model. Land surface temperature (LST) data were obtained from the TERRA MODIS satellite which was downloaded from the website https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/index.php. The results of the calculations for the five triangles obtained that the ROS are 0.03m/s, 0.04m/s, 0.04m/s, 0.04m/s and 0.03m/s for R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5 respectively. The average of ROS is 0.037m/s with a direction of 32.57 degrees.

Peran Masyarakat dalam Pengendalian Kebakaran Hutan di BKPH Slarang KPH Pemalang

Forest fires are a form of forest disturbance that often occurs. Every year, forest fires in Indonesia occur during the dry season. The causes of forest fires in Indonesia are natural and human factors. Forest fires cause an enormous loss in properly controlling forest fires. This study aims to analyze the factors that cause forest fires and examine the efforts to control forest fires and the role of community participation in forest fire control at BKPH Slarang, KPH Pemalang, Central Java. The highest forest fires occurred in 2015 with a frequency of 4 times that the total area of land burned was 11,10 hectares. Forest fire in BKPH Slarang caused a loss of costing IDR 50,234,000. The form of control exercised by BKPH is socialization or counseling about fires. Direct socialization or counseling is given to the community in various activities. Community participation is very high in prevention and blackout activities at BKPH Slarang KPH Pemalang.
 Key words: BKPH Slarang, causative factors, community participation, control of forest fire

The Prevention of Peatland Fires in Indonesia: ‘Law in Action’ to Implement the ASEAN Haze Treaty

Signed in 2002, the ASEAN Haze Treaty is expected to reduce transboundary haze pollution and improve regional environmental governance. Indonesia plays a vital role in the implementation of the Treaty's goals. It has the largest forest and peatland area in Southeast Asia. Yet, its repeated forest and land fires had often caused transboundary pollution. Since 2016 the Indonesian Government has improved its national laws and strengthened institutional aspects of peatland protection. The peatland ecosystem is essential because it is prone to burning. Unfortunately, few studies describe how these policy changes have impacted fire prevention in degraded peatland ecosystems. This article scrutinizes the political factors behind the legal and institutional changes in Indonesia's peatland governance during 2016-2020. The theory of legal culture becomes the primary reference in this regard. This article then identifies six predominant factors in peatland law improvement: strong leadership, improved coordination at the national and sub-national levels, making operational directives, establishing a specialized Government institution dealing with peatland restoration, law enforcement, and the strength of civil society in doing public oversight.

The impact of organic pollutants from Indonesian peatland fires on the tropospheric and lower stratospheric composition

Abstract. The particularly strong dry season in Indonesia in 2015, caused by an exceptionally strong El Niño, led to severe peatland fires resulting in high volatile organic compound (VOC) biomass burning emissions. At the same time, the developing Asian monsoon anticyclone (ASMA) and the general upward transport in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) efficiently transported the resulting primary and secondary pollutants to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). In this study, we assess the importance of these VOC emissions for the composition of the lower troposphere and the UTLS and investigate the effect of in-cloud oxygenated VOC (OVOC) oxidation during such a strong pollution event. This is achieved by performing multiple chemistry simulations using the global atmospheric model ECHAM/MESSy (EMAC). By comparing modelled columns of the biomass burning marker hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and carbon monoxide (CO) to spaceborne measurements from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), we find that EMAC properly captures the exceptional strength of the Indonesian fires. In the lower troposphere, the increase in VOC levels is higher in Indonesia compared to other biomass burning regions. This has a direct impact on the oxidation capacity, resulting in the largest regional reduction in the hydroxyl radical (OH) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). While an increase in ozone (O3) is predicted close to the peatland fires, simulated O3 decreases in eastern Indonesia due to particularly high phenol concentrations. In the ASMA and the ITCZ, the upward transport leads to elevated VOC concentrations in the lower stratosphere, which results in the reduction of OH and NOx and the increase in the hydroperoxyl radical (HO2). In addition, the degradation of VOC emissions from the Indonesian fires becomes a major source of lower stratospheric nitrate radicals (NO3), which increase by up to 20 %. Enhanced phenol levels in the upper troposphere result in a 20 % increase in the contribution of phenoxy radicals to the chemical destruction of O3, which is predicted to be as large as 40 % of the total chemical O3 loss in the UTLS. In the months following the fires, this loss propagates into the lower stratosphere and potentially contributes to the variability of lower stratospheric O3 observed by satellite retrievals. The Indonesian peatland fires regularly occur during El Niño years, and the largest perturbations of radical concentrations in the lower stratosphere are predicted for particularly strong El Niño years. By activating the detailed in-cloud OVOC oxidation scheme Jülich Aqueous-phase Mechanism of Organic Chemistry (JAMOC), we find that the predicted changes are dampened. Global models that neglect in-cloud OVOC oxidation tend to overestimate the impact of such extreme pollution events on the atmospheric composition.

Realtime monitoring for groundwater level and local climate based on universal communication system

The groundwater level and weather patterns and climate conditions are several of the very significant factors which influence the quality of livelihood and the other activity of the tropical peatland environment. The current method of groundwater level and meteorological information aggregate build the use of certain expensive weather station devices, prominent to a lack of vast monitoring suitable to cost barriers and disturbance in some countries. In this research, we have developed and implemented a hardware module based on an Arduino microcontroller and mobile communication, which measures the groundwater level and meteorological data, including air temperature, air humidity, and soil temperature, and humidity, rainfall in peatland area. The data groundwater level is received by a specially developed application interface running on an internet of things (IoT) connected through a global mobile system (GSM) communication. In this work, our proposed system is a model system that can able to generate alerts based on the real-time groundwater level and data weather as potential peat fire in Indonesia. It provides online and data real-time monitoring. In this works, we have resulted in a system to monitor the groundwater level and data weather alert, condition mapping, and warn the people from its disastrous effects.

Realtime monitoring for groundwater level and local climate based on universal communication system

The groundwater level and weather patterns and climate conditions are several of the very significant factors which influence the quality of livelihood and the other activity of the tropical peatland environment. The current method of groundwater level and meteorological information aggregate build the use of certain expensive weather station devices, prominent to a lack of vast monitoring suitable to cost barriers and disturbance in some countries. In this research, we have developed and implemented a hardware module based on an Arduino microcontroller and mobile communication, which measures the groundwater level and meteorological data, including air temperature, air humidity, and soil temperature, and humidity, rainfall in peatland area. The data groundwater level is received by a specially developed application interface running on an Internet of Things (IoT) connected through a Global Mobile System (GSM) communication. In this work, our proposed system is a model system that can able to generate alerts based on the real-time groundwater level and data weather as potential peat fire in Indonesia. It provides online and data real-time monitoring. In this works, we have resulted in a system to monitor the groundwater level and data weather alert, condition mapping, and warn the people from its disastrous effects.

Late Holocene ENSO-related fire impact on vegetation, nutrient status and carbon accumulation of peatlands in Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia

Peat fires in Indonesia are predominantly anthropogenic and intensified by El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-related droughts. In recent decades, peat fires, which typically occurred in degraded areas (partially/entirely deforested peatlands), released massive amounts of carbon by burning the peat swamp vegetation and peat substrate. However, it could also influence atmospheric nutrient deposition, have a fertilizing effect on peatlands, and enhance their productivity. Little is known about how ENSO-related peat fires would affect the vegetation in times of little or no human impact. It is also unclear whether in the past such an ash-fertilization effect also occurred in the long term and how fires affected peatland carbon sequestration, which is one of their important ecosystem services. In order to understand this, we examine the fire regime, vegetation composition, nutrient status and carbon (C) accumulation rates of the Air Hitam and Sungai Buluh peatlands in Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia during the Holocene. The results suggest that increased ENSO frequency and magnitude in the Late Holocene increased the fire occurrence and severity in both sites. During times of little human influence, those fires had little effect on peatland vegetation composition. The coincidence of more frequent fires, a nutrient enrichment and an increased carbon accumulation rate in the Late Holocene suggest that ash-fertilization might have also played a role in the recent past. Thus, low-severity fires could potentially enhance the peatlands' capacity to accumulate carbon if the water table is sufficiently high.