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Land, forest fires fact of life in seven provinces
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Firefighters battle a forest fire in Ogan Ilir, South Sumatra, in September 2019. (AFP/Abdul Qodir)
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and and forest fires have been a fact of life in seven provinces across Indonesia for decades. But activists warn that new epicenters of forest fires may emerge in addition to the seven provinces.
Data from the Modis imaging sensor of the Terra and Aqua satellites compiled by environmental group Auriga Nusantara between 2001 and 2019 show that land and forest fires regularly occurred in seven provinces -- Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and Papua. These fires were mostly triggered by land clearance using the slash-and-burn technique and by dried up peatland, and exacerbated by dry seasons.
Each year, forest fires in Indonesia often started in Riau in January. In the province, fires mostly receded in March, before the second wave came -- usually between May and September.
Forest fires usually hit West Kalimantan between June and October, while Jambi, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Sumatra see them between July and October, and Papua between September and November.
“Most of [Indonesia’s forest fires] were in provinces that regularly recorded forest fires,” Auriga Nusantara’s director for data management, Dedy Sukmara, said recently.
Past fires also tended to occur in regions that had a significant number of peatland ecosystems, which are even more flammable when they dry out and are degraded. Auriga data showed that Jambi, South Sumatra and Riau saw the largest increase in the number of areas of burned peatland.
In Riau, 48,265 hectares of peatland caught fire last year, a 367 percent increase compared with the total peatland burned in the previous year. Fires in South Sumatra destroyed 47,334 ha of peatland in 2019, up by 566 percent from the previous year, and 22,891 ha of peatland in Jambi, a 1,136 percent increase compared with the previous year.
