Rehabilitation Strategies for Deforested Tropical Peatlands in Indonesia

Deforestation of tropical peatlands has occurred seriously in Indonesia for agricultural land and plantation. As a growth of crops is generally low in soil with high water level, local people tried to reduce the water level in tropical peatlands using canals. However, most of the canals were constructed without consideration of peat dome. As a result, not only drainage but structural destruction occurred in tropical peatlands. These led to a peat subsidence and fire hazard. To stop the negative impacts and rehabilitate tropical peatlands, government, local and international organizations and enterprises advanced a scheme and conducted rehabilitation activities. In the beginning, issuing of new concessions was stopped, and regulations on tropical peatlands were enacted by the government. The criteria of the regulations were different by types of tropical peatlands; protected areas and concession area. Secondly, canal blockings were conducted in the field as a fundamental solution. The organizations chose to build blocking structures made of local woods and sandbags in protected areas, whereas enterprises induced bypass flows using mounds made of only peat in concession areas. At last, trees were planted after the canal blocking to rehabilitate the tropical peatlands. Local tree species, such as Dyera costulata, were recommended as they are highly resistant to soil with the high water level. Fruit trees were also planted to increase in income of local people. When the planting area was far from water sources, retention basins were built to prevent damages from a drought. On the basis of these results, we found that different strategies would be required, depending on the types of tropical forests and the purpose of rehabilitation activities. Our results would contribute to establishing strategies to rehabilitate tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia.

* This study was carried out with the support of ´R&D Program for Forest Science Technology (Project No. 2017047A00-1818-BB01)' provided by Korea Forest Service (Korea Forestry Promotion Institute).