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View all search resultsFires in Indonesia burned over 1.9 million hectares through September: monitor
The figure, an area nearly 12 times larger than London, is a conservative estimate in part because haze has complicated satellite verification, said David Gaveau, founder of deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas.
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Firefighters work on cointaining a wildfire in Banjarbaru, South Kalimantan, on October 13, 2026. Toxic haze has shrouded parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for weeks as Jakarta struggles to contain fires that have scorched large tracts of Borneo and Sumatra, with the smoke drifting across the region. (AFP/Muda Sagala)
F
ires in Indonesia burned through over 1.9 million hectares between January and the end of September this year, a monitor analysing satellite imagery said on Monday.
The figure, an area nearly 12 times larger than London, is a conservative estimate in part because haze has complicated satellite verification, said David Gaveau, founder of deforestation monitoring site Nusantara Atlas.
The government has not provided official figures for areas burned since announcing 202,000 hectares had been razed by the end of July.
Gaveau said the true scale of the burning was likely to be even higher than the 1,916,588 hectares his organisation has detected so far.
"Our burned-area estimates are conservative for two reasons. First, we exclude individual burn scars smaller than 6.25 hectares... Second, we prioritise avoiding false detections," he said.
This year, the calculation has also been impacted by heavy haze, which has obscured satellite images at times.
"The total reported burned area therefore underestimates the true area burned," he said.
