| Institution: | 1. Department of Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA;2. BOSF-Mawas Program, Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia;3. Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA;4. Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota, USA
Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN), Jakarta, Indonesia;5. Tropical Forests and People Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, QLD, Australia;6. Independent Scholar, New York, NY, USA;7. Faculty of Forestry, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia;8. Appalachian Laboratory, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Frostburg, MD, USA |
| Abstract: | Near-annual landscape-scale fires in Indonesia's peatlands have caused severe air pollution, economic losses, and health impacts for millions of Southeast Asia residents. While the extent of fires across the peatland surface has been widely attributed to widespread peatland drainage for plantation agriculture, fires that transition from surface into sub-surface soil-based fires are the source of the most dangerous air pollution. Yet the mechanisms by which this transition occurs have rarely been considered, particularly in diversely managed landscapes. Integrating physical geography methods, including active fire scene evaluations and hydrological monitoring, with qualitative methods such as retrospective fire scene evaluations and semi-structured interviews, this article discusses how and why sub-surface peat fire transition occurs in an intensively altered peatland ecosystem in Indonesia's Central Kalimantan province. We demonstrate that variable water table levels and flammable surface vegetation (fire fuels) are co-produced socio-political and biophysical phenomena that enable the conditions in which surface fire is likely to transition into peat fire and increase landscape vulnerability to ongoing, uncontrollable annual fires. This localized understanding of peat fire transition counters normative causal narratives of tropical fire such as ‘slash-and-burn’, with implications for the management of new fire regimes in inhabited landscapes. |
