Recent Forest and Peat Fire Trends in Indonesia The Latest Decade by MODIS Hotspot Data

The worse air pollution due to haze from fires occurred in the Southeast Asia during the strongest 1997-1998 El Niño event in the last century. The dense haze came from forest and peat fires mainly occurred in Indonesia. Recent fires in Indonesia have become an annual phenomenon nevertheless rapid deforestation rate showed declined trend. In addition, Indonesia formally admitted very large amount of CO2 emission mostly from fires and deforestation (about 3.01 billion tonnes after the United States). Indonesia is now requested to reduce air pollution due to haze and carbon emissions at the same time. For an execution of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus) in Indonesia, it is also essential to develop an effective firefighting strategy. In this paper, recent hotspot data captured by NASA MODIS from 2002 to 2010 was analyzed to grasp the recent fire trend in the whole Indonesia. As Indonesia is not so small country, various grid sizes utilizing latitude and longitude angles from 1x1 to 0.01x0.01 degrees were used for various analysis purposes. Analysis results using one degree grids clearly showed the highest hotspot density areas in Indonesia located in Kalimantan and Sumatra Islands. Among them, One of the Mega Rice Project (MRP) regions (grid center:south latitude 3o, east longitude 114o) showed extremely high hotspot density, 0.188hotspots/km2/year. Two regions in Riau and South Sumatra of Sumatra Island followed the MRP area and their hotspot densities were 0.111 and 0.106 hotspots/km2/year, respectively. Other high hotspot density regions were mostly found in deforested area on peat. Analysis results on seasonality of peat fire showed strong correlation with El Niño event. Finally, the authors are now proposing an effective fire forecast method based on recent fire trend in Indonesia