The Impact of Vegetation and Peat Fire Emissions in Indonesia on Air Pollution and Global Climate
Fire is used in Indonesia as a tool to clear tropical forest and to convert peat land for agricultural purposes. This use of fire has considerably increased in recent decades. Increased fire activity is also strongly connected with the decrease of precipitation during El Niño years when the usually moist peat swamps in Indonesia suffer from extreme drought and are thus very susceptible to fires. The emissions from such peat fires greatly exceed those produced by surface vegetation fires and generate smoke haze episodes downwind in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the concentrations of climatically relevant trace species in the atmosphere are considerably enhanced by emissions from Indonesian peat fires. The motivation of this paper is to provide an overview of vegetation and peat fires in Indonesia in recent years and to present the local, regional and global implications of the associated emissions.
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