16 Hotspots of Possible Forest Fires Detected in East Kalimantan

16 Hotspots of Possible Forest Fires Detected in East Kalimantan

Translator: Antara | Editor: Petir Garda Bhwana
28 February 2022 10:47 WIB

TEMPO.COJakarta – The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) detected 16 hotspots indicating forest fires in five districts in East Kalimantan Province.

“A total of 16 hotspots are detected today starting at 1 a.m. until 4 p.m. WITA (Central Indonesian Standard Time) and we have immediately conveyed (the information) to the respective districts,” Iwan Munandar, forecaster at the Sultan Aji Muhammad Sulaiman (SAMS) Sepinggan Meteorology Station, said on Saturday.

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Thailand: Foreign tourists moved to safety as forest fire breaks out in Phuket’s Rawai area

Thailand: Foreign tourists moved to safety as forest fire breaks out in Phuket’s Rawai area

Sunday, 06 Feb 2022

BANGKOK, Feb 6 (The Nation Thailand/ANN): Tourists were evacuated when a forest fire broke out on Laem Krating Cape in Phuket’s Rawai subdistrict on Saturday night (Feb 5).

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Smog from Cambodia brings haze to parts of Malaysia

Smog from Cambodia brings haze to parts of Malaysia

Published by: ARNOLD LOH | NATION | Friday, 28 Jan 2022

GEORGE TOWN: Smog from tens of hotspots burning in Cambodia – about 1,000km away – is blowing toward Malaysia, bringing haze to northern states.

The Asean Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC), based in Singapore, reported that satellite cameras have detected massive fire-prone areas emitting smoke plumes in northern and eastern Cambodia as well as parts of southern Laos.

The northeast monsoon has been blowing the smoke towards Malaysia and ASMC forecasts a slight to moderate haze.

The Air Pollutant Index (API) of Malaysia website operated by the Environment Department shows that for most parts of Kelantan, Terengganu, southern Kedah and Penang have moderate API readings in the 60s to 70s.

In South Seberang Prai, Penang, the API is 92, but this is due to Penang’s landfill fire in Pulau Burung.

The Malaysian Meteorological Department also sent out a haze alert on Thursday (Jan 28), characterising the hotspots in Cambodia as forest fires.

On Jan 11, Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia reported that the nation’s forest fires are “frequently caused by human activities, such as burning brush that has been cleared on plantations, burning tree stumps in fields to make it easier to grow crops, creating grasslands for livestock or in poaching attempts as well as to harvest honey from wild bees”.

In Shah Alam and Klang in Selangor, the API reading is in the 70s to 80s.

An API reading of 0-50 is considered Good, Moderate (51-100), Unhealthy (101-200), Very Unhealthy (201-300) and Hazardous (above 300).

Link: https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2022/01/28/smog-from-cambodia-brings-haze-to-parts-of-malaysia

The 7th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention is Really Needed

The 7th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention is Really Needed

Thursday, January 27, 2022 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)
Open Room Zoom 01.50 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

Guest Speaker:
Dr. Michael Allen Brady (Principal Scientist at CIFOR)

Speaker:
1. Dr. Veerachai Tanpipat (วีรชัย ตันพิพัฒน์) D.Eng. (Kassetsart University, Thailand)
2. Mr.Sihol Aritonang (President Director PT.RAPP/APRIL, Indonesia)
3. Mr. Peter Thavone (Planning and Cooperation Division Department of Forestry, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Lao PDR)

Chair Person:
Dr. Yenni Vetrita (Research Organization for Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN), National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN))

Link Registration: https://ipb.link/fires7thwebinarseries

The webinar is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project
“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

Link Youtube: https://youtu.be/i1e7dws7QWs

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-7thfires

Indonesia’s new epicenter of forest fires shifts away from Sumatra and Borneo

Indonesia’s new epicenter of forest fires shifts away from Sumatra and Borneo

by  on 29 December 2021

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s land and forest fires burned a greater area this year than in 2020, with most of the fires occurring in West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, two provinces that were until recently not major sites of burning.

As of the end of November, fires had burned 353,222 hectares (872,831 acres) of land, an area twice the size of London. This is up nearly 16% from the 296,942 hectares (733,759 acres) burned during the whole of 2020, according to official data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

The largest increase in fires occurred in the provinces of West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), which until a few years ago accounted for only a fraction of total fires.

This year, fires in NTB burned 100,908 hectares (249,349 acres), nearly a third of the national total, and more than triple the area burned in the province last year. In NTT, the figure was higher, at 137,297 hectares (339,268 acres) were burned, up nearly 20% from the 2020 figure.

This makes NTB and NTT the top two provinces in terms of size of fires for two years in a row. Together, fires in the two provinces accounted for two-thirds of the total burned area in Indonesia this year; in 2020, the two provinces were home to half of the total burned area.

In 2019, which saw a particularly bad episode of fires fanned by an El Niño system bringing drier-than-usual weather conditions, the worst-hit regions were the Bornean provinces of Central Kalimantan, with 134,227 hectares (331,682 acres) burned, and West Kalimantan, at 127,462 hectares (314,965 acres).

Among the areas burned by the fires this year was part of an island within NTT’s Komodo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to around 2,800 Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis).

Raffles B. Panjaitan, a fire expert working as an adviser to the minister of environment and forestry, said the scale of the burning in NTT and NTB was unprecedented.

“In the past two years, the fires in NTT and NTB increased to more than 100,000 hectares each,” he said at an event in Jakarta on Dec. 23. “Before that, it was less than 50,000 hectares each.”

Dry spells and scrubland

Raffles said fires in the two provinces had received less attention than those in the perennial hotspots of Sumatra and Borneo, where slash-and-burn practices have routinely stoked massive blazes whose toxic haze has drifted as far as neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.

“Maybe we need to see [what’s happening in NTB and NTT] because until now, there’s no one controlling [the fires there],” he said. “There’s no firefighter brigades directly in charge.”

Bambang Hero Saharjo, a leading expert on forest fires from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said fires in NTB and NTT are not a new phenomenon, although the scale this time around is. The burning, typically of scrubland, isn’t as intense as in Sumatra and Borneo, which have vast areas of carbon-rich peat, he added.

NTB and NTT, Indonesia’s southernmost provinces, are also the country’s driest. They experience less rainfall than the country’s western region, and often go through dry spells lasting more than 60 days. In 2017, NTT didn’t see rain for more than 100 days; the district of East Sumba in NTT suffered from 249 days without rain in 2019.

And when fires to do break out there, the hilly terrain makes it difficult for firefighters to reach burning areas, Bambang said.

“The areas burned are not productive lands, and they are hard to reach [for firefighters],” he told Mongabay. “And the [firefighting] facilities are not optimum yet. Therefore, fire mitigation efforts are not optimum yet.”

More funding needed to fight fires

With the scale of fires increasing in NTB and NTT, Bambang called for greater efforts to mitigate burning in the two provinces.

“The more land that’s burned, the higher the emissions,” he said. “Therefore, it’s only appropriate for stakeholders to pay attention to these two provinces.”

He called on local governments to boost the capacity of the firefighting brigades and to replace the easily combustible scrub with more fire-resistant crops. “Lastly, law enforcement against the perpetrators of land and forest fires needs to be intensified,” Bambang said.

He also called for increased funding from the central government for firefighting and fire prevention efforts.

Raffles said the forestry ministry’s budget for fire mitigation had been slashed in the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The budget … has been miniscule,” he said. “It’s 38 billion rupiah [$2.67 million]. In the past, it used to be 100 billion rupiah [$7 billion] and thus the coordination [for firefighting] at the local level was stronger.”

Raffles said he hoped there would be a budget increase for 2022, warning that “there’s no way [firefighting efforts] can be mobilized in the field if there’s no budget.”

Bambang agreed that fires could get worse without a budget increase to fight them.

“In my opinion, if future fire mitigation efforts are not much different from 2021, then there won’t be a significant decrease in fires, especially with a budget for fire mitigation that’s increasingly reduced because it’s used for the COVID-19 pandemic instead,” he said. “If there’s no budget, or limited budget, then it will hamper fire mitigation efforts. The implication is uncontrollable fires.”

Raffles said the ministry wanted to avoid such a scenario, given that forest fires in Indonesia tend to come under global scrutiny.

Link: https://news.mongabay.com/2021/12/indonesias-new-epicenter-of-forest-fires-shifts-away-from-sumatra-and-borneo/

The 6th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention Management and Rehabilitation

The 6th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention Management and Rehabilitation

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

Guest Speaker
1. Sue Yip (Executive Director BRACE)
“Science-Backed Burn-Free Farming Campaign”
2. Hilario Padilla (Project Manager Regenerative Agriculture BRACE)
“Low-Cost, Easy and Yield-Boosting Burn-Free Farming Solutions”

Speaker
1. Jhun B. Barit (Senior Forest Management Specialist DENR-Forest Management Bureau Forest Resources Conservation Division)
“Forest Fire Prevention, Response and Management: Philippine Context”

2. Dr. Yenni Vetrita (Research Organization for Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN), National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN))
“The Challenges, Opportunities and Prospect of Mapping Indonesia’s Fire History using Remote Sensing Data”

3. Dr. Janica Ser Huay Lee (Assitant Professor on Asian School of the Environment and Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological Unicersity of Singapore)
“Revegation of Tropical Peatlands for Fire Management 2021”

Chair Person:
Prof. Dr. Ir. Bambang Hero Saharjo, M.Agr
Professor on Forest Protection, Faculty of Forestry and Environment IPB University

The webinar is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project
“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

Link Youtube: https://youtu.be/9yEk3SLpWvA

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-6thfires

The 5th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention: Early Warning, Monitoring, and Field Implementation

The 5th Webinar Series: Forest Fire Prevention: Early Warning, Monitoring, and Field Implementation

Thursday, November 25, 2021 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

Guest Speaker
Mr. Georg Buchholz
GIZ-Jerman
“Fire prevention and KPH based on our West Kalimantan experiences”

Speaker
1. Dr. Agie Wandala
Meteorological, Climatological, and Geophysical Agency (BMKG)
“SPARTAN” BMKG’s Fire Danger Rating System for Forest Fire Mitigation and Prevention”

2. Dr. Hoang Viet Anh
Vietnamese Academy of Forest Science (VAFS)
“Vietnam forest fire monitoring system: Overview of technology and operation”

Chair Person:
Dr. Erianto Indra Putra, SHut, MSi
Department of Silviculture Faculty of Forestry and Environment IPB University

The webinar is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project
“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

Link Youtube: https://youtu.be/rfyJ8NLFSow

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-5thfires

The 4th Webinar Series: Mitigation And Collaboration Governance Model for Fire Prevention

The 4th Webinar Series: Mitigation And Collaboration Governance Model for Fire Prevention

Thursday, October 21, 2021 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

*Guest Speaker*
Jean-Michel Dumaz
Regional Civil Defence Attaché
Singapore and ASEAN countries
“Adapting the response organization to the whole challenges of the forest fires”

*Speaker*
1. Dr Wida Susanty Haji Suhaili
Assistant Professor, Universiti Teknologi Brunei
“Peatland Forest Fire: Mitigation and Conversation Management in Brunei Darussalam”

2. Ir. Dody Ruswandi, MSCE
Act of Deputy Emergency Management,
Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB)
“Advancing The FDRS with Antropogenic as an inclusive factor”

*Chair Person*:
Prof. Dr. Ir. Bambang Hero Saharjo, MAgr
Executive Director Regional Fire Management Research Center – Southeast Asia (RFMRC-SEA)

The webinar is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project
“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

Link Youtube: https://youtu.be/wJGrdCWKaak

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-4thfires

The 3rd Webinar Series: The FDRS with anthropogenic and new technologies and innovations for future fires

The 3rd Webinar Series: The FDRS with anthropogenic and new technologies and innovations for future fires

Thursday, September 23, 2021 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

Guest Speaker:
Richard Woods (Adjunct Lecturer Chares Sturt University – Australia)
“The Australian Wildfire Season 2019/2020 and an Overview of Wildfire Investigation Procedures ”

Speaker
1. Prof. Dr. Ahmad Ainuddin Nuruddin (Researcher of the Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Product (INTROP), Universiti Putra Malaysia – Malaysia)
“Preparing for future forest fires: New Technologies and Innovations”

2. Hartanto Sanjaya, SSI, M.Sc (Specialist Engineer, Research Organization for The Assessment and Application of Technology, National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN))
“Advancing The FDRS with Antropogenic as an inclusive factor”

Chair Person:
Dr. Yenni Vetrita (Researcher, Aeronautics and Space Research Organization (LAPAN), National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN))

The webinar  is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project

“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

Link Youtube: https://youtu.be/0E9qY1Sjodw

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-3rdfires

The 2nd Webinar Series: Prevention and Management of Forest and Land Fires in In Southeast Asia With an Emphasis on Indonesia

The 2nd Webinar Series: Prevention and Management of Forest and Land Fires in In Southeast Asia With an Emphasis on Indonesia

Thursday, August 26, 2021 | 02.00 – 04.00 (GMT + 7 Jakarta Time)

Speaker:
1. Dr. Veerachai Tanpipat (วีรชัย ตันพิพัฒน์) D.Eng. (Research Scientist at Upper ASEAN Wildland Fire Special Research Unit, Forestry Research Center, Kasetsart University, Thailand)
“Community-based Fire and Water Management (CBFiWM)”
2. Prof. Dr. Ir. Bambang Hero Saharjo, M.Agr (Executive Director Regional Fire Management Research Center – Southeast Asia (RFMRC-SEA))
“Research of Indonesian GHG emission assessment from forest and land fires”

Chair Person:
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ir. Lailan Syaufina, M.Sc (Lecturer on Forest Protection, Faculty of Foretsry and Environment, IPB University)

The webinar  is Supported by The ITTO – Indonesia MoEF Project
“Capacity Building on Forest and Land Fire Management in Indonesia” which was Funded by The Government of Japan”

 

Link youtube: https://youtu.be/cJoVUFLFgIM

Link Materi: https://ipb.link/materi-2ndfires