Combining Decision Rules with Spatial Data to Assess Climate Mitigation Options for Indonesia’s Peat Land Carbon Stocks

Earl C Saxon, Union of Concerned Scientists, earl.saxon@forestinform.com (Presenter)
Stuart M Sheppard, Union of Concerned Scientists, stuart.sheppard@forestinform.com

Widespread draining, clearing and burning of Indonesia’s peat wetlands puts that country in the front ranks of global greenhouse gas emitters. Once exposed to air, the organic soils lose carbon slowly through decay and rapidly through burning. The entire “active layer” above the water table will inevitably be lost. This process can take years, decades or centuries depending on the thickness of the peat and the frequency/intensity/extent of fires.

In an effort to slow the pace of loss of carbon stocks from peat wetlands, Presidential Regulation 71 of 2014 introduced a new zoning scheme. It reduces the depth of allowable drainage and defines areas for protection, reservation and utilization. Each zone has limits on further development, obligations on persons already using it for crops and plantations, and requirements for monitoring.

We applied the Regulation’s zoning criteria to Indonesian government data on public and private land tenures and to the following data sets prepared from five NASA remote sensing products:

• SRTM - Digital elevation model (U.S. Geological Survey, 2009)

• SRTM - Hydrological basins (Lehner, B., Verdin, K., and Jarvis, A., 2008)

• MODIS, GLAS - Above-ground biomass (Saatchi, S. S., et al., 2011)

• LANDSAT – Forest cover loss (Hansen, M. C., 2013)

• LANDSAT – Peat land (Wetlands International, 2003, 2004)

• LANDSAT – Oil palm plantations (Killeen 2014)

The combination of explicit government rules with published spatial data produced a transparent quantitative assessment of the potential scale of peat land protection as a component of Indonesia’s “Intended Nationally Determined Contribution” (INDC) to climate mitigation. The assessment reports climate mitigation potential under the Regulation as it currently stands and identifies opportunities to increase protection of carbon stocks while decreasing conflict with current land users.

The authors would like to acknowledge support from the Climate and Land Use Alliance to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Theme 4: Human influence on global ecosystems   (Mon 4:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Hansen, Matt: Integrating MODIS, Landsat and GLAS in characterizing forest extent, structure and change ...details

Poster Location ID: 6