Reassessment of peatland fires in Central Kalimantan

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was used to explain fire occurrences in Indonesia's peatlands until 2018. However, the severely spread of 2019 fires although there was no El Nino event (Niño 3.4=-0.04, neutral) in a year, urged us to reassess the peat fires using reliable data and scientific knowledge. Here, we did a series of reassessments of peatland fires in Central Kalimantan by using various data and knowledge about fire, including weather, groundwater levels (GWL), air pollutants, and other parameters related to fire. The reassessment is expected to help respond to peatland fires under rapid climate change. A recent study by the authors has shown the effectiveness of the use of the OLR-MC index as an alternative to ENSO and the peatland fire reassessment model (MODEL-0) based on groundwater level (GWL). As a result of reassessing the generation of various air pollutants from the 2002 fire using MODEL-0, we clearly showed that the air pollutants from the peat components increased rapidly with the onset of the deep peat fire. The findings obtained in this paper are expected to be useful in responding to peatland fires under climate change.