Wetland Fires and Its Environmental Conditions

Abstract

Today, many wetlands have been converted into agricultural, industrial, and residential areas. This conversion of land functions creates new problems for the environment and human, one of which is land fires. The results of land fires can also cause other problems that results in losses in various fields, such as human health, the economy, and other fields. The emergence of smog as a result of land fires can cause respiratory problems, disruption of the transportation system, conflicts between neighboring countries, and the others. South Sumatra Province is one of the largest contributors to the haze as a result of land fires, especially its wetlands. Ogan Ilir Regency is one of the areas in South Sumatra Province which has extensive wetlands and fires frequently occur. Fires are caused by triggering factors, one of which is natural factors such as a prolonged dry season, availability of water supply, and intensity of rainfall. This study is an analytic descriptive study that aimed to provide an overview of environmental conditions on land, the majority of which are wetlands which experienced fires in Ogan Ilir Regency in 2019. The environmental conditions studied included soil and vegetation types. The data obtained will be displayed through tables and graphs, then interpreted and analyzed descriptively. The type of data used is secondary data in the form of a report by the Regional Disaster Management Agency Ogan Ilir Regency related to land fires in OI Regency and processed using the Geographic Information System (GIS) application. The results of the analysis show that the area of land fires that mostly occurred in North Indralaya District was 382,7 hectares with a total of 144 hotspots. The burnt area was dominated by peat soil (53%) and scrub vegetation (43%).

Optimizing disaster communication for future fire mitigation

“…East Kalimantan is one of the Provinces where forest and land fires are increase almost every year. This research uses an analytical descriptive method to identify the research area and collect secondary data [4,43]. Secondary data collected is hotspot data from 2012-2022 which was recorded from S-NPP VIIRS satellite imagery in East Kalimantan.…”

Wetland Fires in Community Perspectives

“…Ogan Ilir is one of the regencies in South Sumatra with the most land fires every year. Data from Lestari et al (2021) show that there were 317 hotspots that occurred in 10 districts in Ogan Ilir in 2019. This number was the highest compared to the previous year.…”

“…In the tropics, natural factors that cause fires due to the accumulation of foliage or litter, wind, rock friction, and heat in the dry season trigger fires (Arisanty et al 2020). The study by Lestari et al (2021) conducted in the Ogan Ilir area showed that the most frequently burned areas were peaty soil (53%) and scrub vegetation (43%). Wetland fires, particularly in peat soils are very dangerous and difficult to detect especially if they occur in the dry season (Nurhayati et al 2020).…”