Filling a critical gap in Indonesia’s national carbon monitoring, reporting, and verification capabilities for supporting REDD+ activities: Incorporating, quantifying and locating fire emissions from within tropical peat-swamp forests

Mark A. Cochrane, South Dakota State University/GIScCE, mark.cochrane@sdstate.edu (Presenter)
Bambang Hero Saharjo, IPB, bhsaharjo@gmail.com
Erianto Indra Putra, South Dakota State University/GIScCE, erianto.putra@sdstate.edu
Robert J. Yokelson, University of Montana, bob.yokelson@mso.umt.edu
Andrew P. Vayda, Consultant, apvayda@gmail.com
Kevin Christopher Ryan, Consultant, kryan.wildland.fire@gmail.com
Christopher Barber, South Dakota State University, christopher.barber@sdstate.edu

Episodic uncontrolled fires within drained peat-swamp forests in Indonesia result in its being ranked the 4th largest CO2 emitter over the last half century. Draining and land use changes cause deep organic soils storing vast amounts of carbon to be lost to decomposition and combustion. We are developing a prototype peat-fire emissions module to incorporate into Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) efforts of the Indonesian Carbon Accounting System (INCAS) to enable annual quantification of fire-related emissions. We utilize Landsat and MODIS data to quantify land cover changes, burned area and estimate the timing of fire activity. TRMM data provide precipitation history related to the timing of observed water table changes that impact peat-fire activity. We are using repeated Lidar collections (2007, 2010, 2014) to provide quantified temporal topographic change maps to validate modeled results of fire-related peat consumption. The work leverages extensive and ongoing field data collection efforts for hydrology, fuels, land uses and fire occurrence at the 120,000 ha Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) site, 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. 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. Our interdisciplinary research is investigating 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.

Presentation Type:  Poster

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

Associated Project(s): 

• Cochrane, Mark: Biodiversity Implications of Forest Disturbance and Related Landscape Dynamics in the Brazilian Amazon ...details

Poster Location ID: 39