The increasing extent and frequency of fires globally requires nuanced understanding of the drivers of largescale events for improved prevention and mitigation. Yet, the drivers of fires are often poorly understood by various stakeholders in spatially expansive and temporally dynamic landscapes. Further, perceptions about the main cause of fires vary amongst stakeholders, which amplify ongoing challenges from policies being implemented inconsistently across different governance levels. Here, we develop a spatially and temporallyexplicit typology of fire prevalence across Kalimantan, Indonesia, a region with significant contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Based on livelihood information and data on climate, soil type and forest degradation status, we find that in intact forest the density of fires in villages that largely coincide with oil palm concessions was twice as high as in villages outside the concessions across all years. Fires occurring in degraded land on mineral soil across all years were also most prevalent in villages with industrial plantations (oil palm or timber).On the other hand, in degraded peatland, where fires are most intense during dry years induced by the El Niño episodes, occurrence rates were high regardless of village primary livelihoods. Based on these findings we recommend two key priorities for fire mitigation going forward for policy across different governance levels in Kalimantan: degraded peatland as the priority area and industrial plantations as the priority sector. Our study suggests a fire prevention and mitigation approach, which accounts for climate, land type and village livelihood, has the potential to deliver more effective means of management.
Tropical peatland burning in Asia has been intensifying over the last decades, emitting huge amounts of gas species and aerosol particles. Both laboratory and field studies have been conducted to investigate emission from peat burning, yet a significant variability in data still exists. We conducted a series of experiments to characterize the gas and particulate matter emitted during burning of a peat sample from Sumatra in Indonesia. Heating temperature of peat was found to regulate the ratio of CH4 to CO2 in emissions (ΔCH4/ΔCO2) as well as the chemical composition of particulate matter. The ΔCH4/ΔCO2 ratio was larger for higher temperatures, meaning that CH4 emission is more pronounced at these conditions. Mass spectrometric analysis of organic components indicated that aerosol particles emitted at higher temperatures had more unsaturated bonds and ring structures than that emitted from cooler fires. The result was consistently confirmed by nuclear magnetic resonance analysis. In addition, CH4 emitted by burning charcoal, which is derived from previously burned peat, was lower by at least an order of magnitude than that from fresh peat. These results highlight the importance of both fire history and heating temperature for the composition of tropical peat‐fire emissions. They suggest that remote sensing technologies that map fire histories and temperatures could provide improved estimates of emissions.
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