Project Funding: 2013 - 2016

NRA: 2013 NASA: Carbon Monitoring System   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Project Summary: Because of episodic uncontrolled fires within drained peat-swamp forests, Indonesia is ranked the 4th largest CO2 emitter over the last half century. The former 1 million hectare Mega Rice Project (MRP), designed to convert extensive peat lands into farm lands, is a major emissions source. Deep organic soils storing vast amounts of carbon are now being lost to decomposition and combustion. The 120,000 ha Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) project is within the former MRP. In collaboration with the Indonesian government's Forestry Research and Development Agency (FORDA), we will develop a prototype peat-fire emissions module for KFCP to incorporate into the Indonesian National Carbon Accounting System (INCAS). This capacity will enable annual quantification of fire-related emissions. Our research project will utilize Landsat and MODIS data and products to quantify land cover changes, burned area and estimate the timing of fire activity. We will incorporate TRMM data for relating precipitation history to the timing of observed water table changes that impact peat-fire activity at KFCP. We will integrate satellite data with existing aerial KFCP Lidar (2007 & 2010), and propose a repeat Lidar collection during the study to provide quantified temporal topographic change maps to validate our modeled results of fire-related peat consumption. This project will leverage the extensive and ongoing data collection efforts for hydrology, fuels, land uses and fire occurrence at KFCP, with our initial field work and laboratory testing of regional peat combustion and emission characteristics to provide guided field testing of background and fire-related carbon emission rates and types (e.g. methane, CO2, CO, particulates, other) during El Nino and non-El Nino years as available. Through groundbreaking emissions field sampling of in-situ smoldering surface, shallow (<20 cm) and deep (>20 cm) peat fires, with on-site gas chromatography for quantifying reactive species, whole air sampling for precise lab measurements of non-reactive gases, and simultaneous filter sampling of particulates, we will create comprehensive and pertinent emissions factors (EFs) that will be critically important for assessing the health impacts and total global warming potential (GWP) of these emissions. In our interdisciplinary research, we will investigate the chains of social and bio-physical events leading to these deep-peat fires, integrating fire scene analyses with social data to describe when, where, how, and under what conditions fires within KFCP have occurred, so that more effective mitigation strategies can be developed in the future. Accurate accounting of peat-fire carbon emissions requires understanding how their presence, depth of burning, and spread rates relate to the interplay of climate, weather, land use, land cover, drainage status, disturbance history, fire type, peat depth and composition. Modeling this phenomenon requires defining 1) the annual surface area burned, 2) the available fuel fraction (burnable) at each location through time, and 3) the amount of fuel consumed per unit area. We will implement a modeling approach that initially uses existing data on the peat hydrology, climate, land cover, burned area, timing of ignitions and fuel loads to stochastically provide peat fire probability and parameterize depth and area burned from the 2007 Lidar data. This initial model will be used to project the expected area, type, and depth of burning from 2007-2011 and then checked against the 2011 Lidar data set to refine calibration of the modeled parameters. The third modeling phase will provide Monte Carlo estimates of type, depth and area of burning, with emissions quantitatively weighted by appropriate EFs derived for surface, shallow and deep peat smoke amounts that will be validated using the proposed third Lidar data collection.

Publications:

Jayarathne, T., Stockwell, C. E., Gilbert, A. A., Daugherty, K., Cochrane, M. A., Ryan, K. C., Putra, E. I., Saharjo, B. H., Nurhayati, A. D., Albar, I., Yokelson, R. J., Stone, E. A. 2018. Chemical characterization of fine particulate matter emitted by peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the 2015 El Nino. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 18(4), 2585-2600. DOI: 10.5194/acp-18-2585-2018

Lu, X., Zhang, X., Li, F., Cochrane, M. A. 2019. Investigating Smoke Aerosol Emission Coefficients Using MODIS Active Fire and Aerosol Products: A Case Study in the CONUS and Indonesia. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 124(6), 1413-1429. DOI: 10.1029/2018JG004974

Putra, E. I., Cochrane, M. A., Vetrita, Y., Graham, L., Saharjo, B. H. 2018. Determining critical groundwater level to prevent degraded peatland from severe peat fire. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. 149, 012027. DOI: 10.1088/1755-1315/149/1/012027

Putra, E. I., Hafni, D. A., Harahap, A. A., Cochrane, M. A., Saharjo, B. H. 2019. Assessing rainfall pattern, groundwater level, and peat hydraulic conductivity for effective peat prevention measure. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. 284(1), 012021. DOI: 10.1088/1755-1315/284/1/012021

Vetrita, Y., Cochrane, M. A. 2019. Fire Frequency and Related Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Indonesia's Peatlands. Remote Sensing. 12(1), 5. DOI: 10.3390/rs12010005

Wedeux, B., Dalponte, M., Schlund, M., Hagen, S., Cochrane, M., Graham, L., Usup, A., Thomas, A., Coomes, D. 2020. Dynamics of a human-modified tropical peat swamp forest revealed by repeat lidar surveys. Global Change Biology. 26(7), 3947-3964. DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15108

Yokelson, R. J., Saharjo, B. H., Stockwell, C. E., Putra, E. I., Jayarathne, T., Akbar, A., Albar, I., Blake, D. R., Graham, L. L. B., Kurniawan, A., Meinardi, S., Ningrum, D., Nurhayati, A. D., Saad, A., Sakuntaladewi, N., Setianto, E., Simpson, I. J., Stone, E. A., Sutikno, S., Thomas, A., Ryan, K. C., Cochrane, M. A. 2022. Tropical peat fire emissions: 2019 field measurements in Sumatra and Borneo and synthesis with previous studies. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 22(15), 10173-10194. DOI: 10.5194/acp-22-10173-2022

Stockwell, C. E., Jayarathne, T., Cochrane, M. A., Ryan, K. C., Putra, E. I., Saharjo, B. H., Nurhayati, A. D., Albar, I., Blake, D. R., Simpson, I. J., Stone, E. A., Yokelson, R. J. 2016. Field measurements of trace gases and aerosols emitted by peat fires in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, during the 2015 El Nino. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 16(18), 11711-11732. DOI: 10.5194/acp-16-11711-2016

Hatch, L. E., Luo, W., Pankow, J. F., Yokelson, R. J., Stockwell, C. E., Barsanti, K. C. 2015. Identification and quantification of gaseous organic compounds emitted from biomass burning using two-dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 15(4), 1865-1899. DOI: 10.5194/acp-15-1865-2015

Stockwell, C. E., Veres, P. R., Williams, J., Yokelson, R. J. 2015. Characterization of biomass burning emissions from cooking fires, peat, crop residue, and other fuels with high-resolution proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 15(2), 845-865. DOI: 10.5194/acp-15-845-2015

Jayarathne, T., Stockwell, C. E., Yokelson, R. J., Nakao, S., Stone, E. A. 2014. Emissions of Fine Particle Fluoride from Biomass Burning. Environmental Science & Technology. 48(21), 12636-12644. DOI: 10.1021/es502933j

Stockwell, C. E., Yokelson, R. J., Kreidenweis, S. M., Robinson, A. L., DeMott, P. J., Sullivan, R. C., Reardon, J., Ryan, K. C., Griffith, D. W. T., Stevens, L. 2014. Trace gas emissions from combustion of peat, crop residue, domestic biofuels, grasses, and other fuels: configuration and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) component of the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4). Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 14(18), 9727-9754. DOI: 10.5194/acp-14-9727-2014

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Project Profile