Carbon Loss Affected by Fires on Various Forests and Land Types in South Sumatera

Abstract

Forest and land fires are a high source of emissions in South Sumatera. In line with the national policy, South Sumatera Province commits in reducing emission, include emission from the forest and land fire. This research was aimed to assess carbon loss affected by fire in the year of 2015 that covered 3 districts in South Sumatera i.e Musi Banyuasin, Banyuasin, and Musi Rawas. The research was conducted by remeasurement of carbon stocks plots on 4 forests and land type i.e. secondary peat swamp forest, secondary dryland forest, bushes swamp, and forest plantation. Carbon stocks measuring are conducted on sample plots in a rectangular shape of 20 m x 50 m of size for various types of natural forest and a circle shape in the radius of 11.29 cm and 7.98 cm respectively for forest plantation of < 4 years and > 4 years old. Furthermore, carbon stocks in each plot are measured for 3 carbon pools of above-ground biomass, deadwood and litter. The result shows that carbon loss was varying on each forest and land type. The largest number of carbon loss occur on secondary peat swamp forest of 94.2 t/ha that equivalent to the emission of 345.4 t CO2eq. The second largest of carbon loss occur on secondary dryland forest of 36.3 t/ha following by forest plantation and bushes swamp of 18.5 t/ha and 13.5 t/ha. The largest carbon loss on secondary peat swamp forest and forest plantation occur on above-ground biomass pool but secondary dry forest and bushes swamp occur on the dead wood pool.

Identifying and addressing knowledge gaps for improving greenhouse gas emissions estimates from tropical peat forest fires

“…We did not observe the impact of fires on litter, with predicted means being similar for all of the treatments ranging from 2.77 (SF2) to 3.4 (SF1) and 3.2 (SF), findings similar to other studies for peat swamp forests of Indonesia (Qirom et al, 2018;Siahaan et al, 2020).…”

“…This pilot study shows that after one recent fire about 90 Mg C ha -1 remains aboveground as the deadwood carbon pool (Figs. 1, 4, Table 2), similar to findings of others (Qirom et al, 2018;Siahaan et al, 2020). Following a second consecutive fire, about a half of the deadwood is retained, mainly as CWD, or converted to pyrogenic carbon.…”

“…Emissions from aboveground fuels are often excluded; for example, among published estimates of Indonesian peat fire emissions, we found only a few original studies that measured (and included) losses from aboveground dead biomass (e.g. Siahaan et al, 2020;Toriyama et al, 2014). Furthermore, emission estimates derived from complex biogeochemical models lack empirical data to reduce uncertainty in predictions.…”

“…For researchers studying the impact of fire regimes on carbon balance of peat forests, sampling design and sample size become non-trivial questions. Long undisturbed peat forests have a dense canopy of overstorey trees that account for the majority of aboveground carbon (Verwer and van der Meer, 2018), while recently and repeatedly burnt peat forest is either dominated by vigorous young regrowth or dominated by bare ground, with a low density of dead trees remaining from previous fires (Konecny et al, 2016;Siahaan et al, 2020). Sampling designs must be flexible enough to characterise differences in the allocation of carbon among pools in relation to the number of fires and fire return interval.…”

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“…). PenelitianSiahaan et al (2020) menyatakan bahwa kehilangan karbon akibat kebakaran berbeda-beda tergantung pada tipe hutan dan lahan. Pada masing-masing komponen karbon, kehilangan karbon tersebut sangat bervariasi dan pada komponen karbon tertentu mengalami kenaikan potensi…”