From satellites to soils: quantifying and accounting for sources of uncertainty in carbon emission estimates from fires in Indonesian peatlands
Abstract
Indonesia's forests encompass 84% (200,000 km2) of global tropical peatlands. These peat swamp forests have sequestered a 57Gt reservoir of carbon in their deep organic (peat) soils over thousands of years. However, during the last few decades these forested ecosystems have been progressively degraded through unsustainable logging, drainage, conversion to agriculture, and wildfire. Only 6% of peatlands remain unaffected by development. Frequent wildfires and their associated emissions have become a globally-significant side-effect of peatland conversion.
Uncontrolled fires burning in drained peatlands have become a serious problem for Indonesia, producing devastating environmental effects and comprising the single largest source of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, more than four-times fossil fuel-related emissions. Indonesia has unilaterally committed, through its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the UNFCCC, to unconditionally reduce its GHG emissions by 29% from the Business as Usual (BAU) emission projections by 2030, but this will not be possible without first changing land use practices and reducing the rate of peatland degradation. As part of our NASA CMS project, we have been working to improve Indonesia's Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) capabilities for peatland carbon emissions. To do so, we have been studying numerous sources of uncertainty related to these estimates. These include; evaluating capabilities for satellite-based detection of burned areas and aerosols in smoke plumes, ascertaining when surface fires burn into the peat, controls on depth of burn and fire behavior, quantifying bulk density variability as functions of previous disturbance and proximity to drainage canals, and development of site-specific emission factors of greenhouse gases for three peatland areas in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Increased understanding of how Indonesia's peatlands are changing, improved quantification of critical factors related to fire emissions, and defined limitations of current satellite monitoring practices are needed to improve carbon emissions monitoring and provide realistic estimations of related uncertainty.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B34A..04C
- Keywords:
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- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES