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Indonesia's 2019 fire season not doomsday for forests, but ecological concerns remain
A satellite assessment estimated that 1.64 million hectares burned over the period across seven Indonesian provinces, including 670,000 ha -- 41 percent of the total burnt area -- in peatland.
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Indonesian firefighters battle a forest fire in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra in September. The blazes were spewing toxic haze across Southeast Asia, forcing the closure of schools and airports and prompting Jakarta to deploy thousands of personnel to tackle them. (AFP/Abdul Qodir)
W
hen the news of raging forest and land fires across the country broke out earlier this year, concerns were raised that they could be the end for Indonesia’s remaining rainforests as the massive flames engulfed the country’s vast green belt inch by inch.
However, a recent report by an environment research group, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), showed that Indonesia might still have a chance onto hold its oxygen sources as this year’s wildfires mostly burned idle land and former forests rather than intact rainforests.
Alarm bells alerting of ecological impacts still rang as this year’s fire season blazed through peatland and aged forests and led to the release of millions of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
CIFOR’s report, issued on Monday, highlighted an analysis of satellite imagery of burned land across the archipelago from between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31.
The group’s scientists analyzed time-series images taken by the Sentinel-2 satellite using the Google Earth Engine to look for how much land had burned and what type of land cover had gone up in flames.
The satellite images showed that 76 percent of the burnt land in 2019 was classified as lahan terlantar (idle lands). The areas were forests several years ago, but cycles of repeated burns have converted them into unproductive, degraded scrubland.
