Spatial Modelling on Susceptibility of Fires in Peatland, a Case Study in District of Bengkalis, Riau Province

Abstract

Peatland is one of ecosystem types in Indonesia which plays important role in maintaning terrestrial carbons, hydrological cycles and preserving biodiversity. Recently, most of the peatland (forest and non forest) has been degraded. One of the causes of degradation is fire. This study was conducted to establish a model and map of peat fire risk in District of Bengkalis, Riau Province. The model was established by hotspot distribution as an indicator of fire occurrences. Environmental and infrastructure aspects were employed as supportive factors to fire. Factors which were used to describe the environmental aspect were landcover and vegetation types, peat depth, and greenness level of vegetation. Factors of infrastructure aspect were the distance of fire occurrences with road network, distance to the river network and to the center of villages. Weighting and scoring were the basis of model development using the method of Complete Mapping Analysis (CMA). The model suggested that peat fire is more strongly affected by infrastructure aspect when compared with environmental aspect with the weight of 0.658 and 0.342 respectively. This explains that fires occurred were triggered more by human factor rather than environmental factor. The chosen factor of infrastructure aspect is distance from occurenced fires of road network. The selected environmental aspects were landcover and vegetation types, peat depth and greenness level of vegetation. Seemingly, the distance of river and center of villages may not be the supportive factors of peat fires, as showed by the presence of hotspots in which found mostly in the area far from the river and village center. The model can explain the condition of average of fire occurrences with the validation of 80%. Therefore, it can be used as the referrence in developing and establishing of polic ies for peat fire prevention and suppression.