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Indonesia unveils plan to halve forest fires by 2019

by on 29 December 2017

JAKARTA – The Indonesian government has unveiled an ambitious plan to nearly halve the number of fire hotspots in the country by 2019, in part through the restoration of degraded peat forests.

The fires are an annual occurrence, linked to the clearing of forests for logging and monoculture plantations. In recent years the problem has been exacerbated by the draining of peat swamps, which leaves them highly combustible.

Under the new plan revealed Tuesday by the Coordinating Ministry for the Economy, the government aims to tackle the fires through a two-pronged approach.

First is ensuring that the 24,000 square kilometers (9,266 square miles) of degraded peat areas slated to be restored by Indonesia’s peatland restoration agency (BRG) are not burned. Second is boosting prevention efforts in 731 villages in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of Borneo, identified as being historically prone to fires.

In all, the plan calls for the protection of 121,000 square kilometers (46,718 square miles) of land, which, if kept successfully free of fire by 2019, will reduce the anticipated number of hotspots by 49 percent compared to business-as-usual levels.

Reed more Indonesia unveils plan to halve forest fires by 2019

Economy Forest Fire RFMRC-SEA

Singapore and the Smoke Haze Crisis

Vol. 53, Issue No. 3, 20 Jan, 2018

 

The 2013 and 2015 episodes of smoke haze over Singapore were some of the worst environmental crises in the nation’s history. Severe haze caused by land clearance fires in Indonesia blanketed Singapore for more than a month each time, leading to a dramatic shift in public attention and policies regarding the nation’s engagement with its neighbouring resource-extractive economies. This article reads the development of this crisis through the myth of the “air-conditioned nation,” arguing that it presents an opportunity to reconnect capitalism and regionalisation with their consequences.

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Forest Fire Global International RFMRC-SEA

Forest fire risk assessment using hotspot analysis in GIS

This article by Dr. El-Said Mamdouh Mahmoud Zahran et al. is published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal, Volume 11, 2017
BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBLISHERS

 

The recent forest fire incidents are becoming a major concern as they seriously threaten the environment, economy and human’s safety. This research study aims to figure out forest fire hotspots using advanced hotspot analysis in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Further, it can help propose appropriate preventive measures using Site Suitability and Network Analyses in GIS. The study focuses on Brunei Darussalam because it is increasingly struck by forest fire incidents among all regions in Southeast Asia.

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Forest Fire Global International RFMRC-SEA

Indonesia’s Forest Fires: Limited Resources Hamper Fight

By | 28

 

Forest fires sweeping across Sumatra and Kalimantan in recent months prompted six Indonesian provinces to declare a state of emergency. Yet the scale of resources devoted to fighting and preventing forest fires remains far short of what is needed to turn around Indonesia’s rising rates of deforestation and meet Indonesia’s ambitious climate pledge.

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Forest Fire MYANMAR RFMRC-SEA

Firefighters coming home for Christmas

19 December 2017

 

Gardnerville resident Rhonda Vega said her Christmas will be complete when her son Darren and her son-in-law Aaron Leising are safe home from the Southern California fires.

Darren is a member of the Salmon Idaho Heli-Rappellers and Aaron went down with East Fork Brush 10.

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Forest Fire INDONESIA RFMRC-SEA

Is Indonesia’s fight against forest fires falling short?

By ARMIDA S ALISJAHBANA, JONAH BUSCH | 07 December 2017

 

Forest fires sweeping across Sumatra and Kalimantan in recent months prompted six Indonesian provinces to declare a state of emergency.

Yet the scale of resources devoted to fighting and preventing fires remains far short of what is needed to turn around Indonesia’s rising rates of deforestation and meet Indonesia’s ambitious climate pledge.

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Forest Fire Forestry Global International Resources Technology

Using robots to detect forest fires

By Stephen Corby | 01 December 2017

 

Rex Sham and his WALL-E-inspired robots are improving fire detection to slash carbon emissions and make the world better.

If he were in a movie, Rex Sham would be the bad guy, or at the very least the well-meaning scientist who unwittingly wipes out the human race. In reality, Sham, the co-founder and chief science officer of Insight Robotics, is using his ingenious, WALL-E-like fire-detecting robots to save the planet.

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Global RFMRC-SEA

Global Wildland Fire Early Warning

Global Early Warning System for Wildland Fire

Mapping Products

Global Fire EWS 10-day forecasts

Global FWI Monthly Forecasts

Outline of Fire Danger Products in the Global Fire EWS

The fire danger indicators currently presented on the Global Fire Early Warning System (Global Fire EWS) are components of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. The Global EWS provides 1-10 day forecasted FWI System data based on the Canadian Meterolological Centre’s (CMC) Global Deterministic Forecast System (GDPS). The FWI System components are currently calibrated to commonly used threshold values that identify low to extreme conditions. As such, the Global EWS provides a means of comparing relative fire danger conditions between countries, continents, and biomes; and the 1-10 day forecast identifies the expected future fire danger trend. This type of information is often useful for large-scale fire management decision-making such as planning cross-border suppression resource exchanges.

Although these indicators can be used to compare fire danger across the globe, the indicators are not calibrated to the local fire regime, which includes the influences of fuel, ignition sources, climate, fire management/suppression policy, etc. For that reason, the next stage in development of this system is regional calibration to adjust the fire danger scales using historical fire data (primarily remotely sensed) and weather data. This will calibrate the fire danger indicators to provide operational-level information such as potential for fire starts and difficulty of control. Regional calibration will be an on-going collaborative effort with regional and national agencies.

The FWI System has 6 components that represent fuel dryness and potential fire behaviour at the landscape level. All components are presented in the Global EWS:

  • Fire Weather Index (FWI) is a general indicator of fire danger and fire intensity
  • Buildup Index (BUI) indicates dryness of medium and large dead fuels
  • Initial Spread Index (ISI) is an indicator of rate of fire spread
  • Drought Code (DC) indicates dryness of deep, compact organic layers in the forest floor
  • Duff Moisture Code (DMC) indicates dryness of loosely compacted, upper organic layers of the forest floor; often used as a predictor of lightning-caused fires
  • Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) is an indicator of the dryness of dead fine fuels; often used as a predictor of human- and lightning-caused fires

More details on the FWI System can be found on the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System website , and the Canadian Meterolological Centre’s (CMC) Global Deterministic Forecast System (GDPS) at https://weather.gc.ca/grib/index_e.html . As the Global EWS develops in future, other fire danger indicators and weather forecast models will be included for multiple comparisons. As well, various remote sensing data will be incorporated to provide additional fire danger products.

IFFN International RFMRC-SEA

International Workshop on National Guidelines on the Protection of Forests Against Fire

Bogor, Indonesia, 8-9 December 1997
(IFFN No. 18 – January 1998, p. 49-51)

Johann G. Goldammer, Editor IFFN

As a consequence of the fires and smoke pollution in Indonesia between 1982 and 1994 a cooperation agreement was made to develop a project “Integrated Forest fire Management in Indonesia Phase I: National Guidelines on the Protection of Forests against Fires”. The cooperation agreement between the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), the Directorate General of Forest protection and Nature Conservation, Ministry of Forestry, and the Faculty of Forestry, Bogor University of Agricultural Sciences, was signed on 21 October 1996.

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Activities RFMRC-SEA

Field Visit to Bintuni

By: Erianto Indra Saputra | 16 November 2017

 

As part of the Y-1 activities of UMCES/IPB-NASA Tropical Peat Fire Project, the team visited Bintuni Regency, West Papua to explore the opportunity to conduct peat fire research there. The co-director of the project, Prof. Dr. Bambang Hero Saharjo (Faculty of Forestry IPB) lead the team, accompanied by Dr. Erianto Indra Putra (Faculty of Forestry IPB), Dr. Grahame Applegate (Univ. of Sunshine Coast, Australia), and Andri Thomas (BOSF, Central Kalimantan). The team left Jakarta to Manokwari on 11 November 2017 and arrived safely on the early morning of 12 November 2017. After having the opening meeting with the Vice Dean of the University of Papua, the team continued the trip to Bintuni Regency on 13 November 2017 by using small plane operated by Susi Air (Fig. 1). Three faculty staff from Faculty of Forestry, University of Papua, joined the team to Bintuni. They are Benny Rettob (Dean), Wolfram Mofu (Head of the Department) and Alfredo Wanma (senior lecturer).

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