Assessment of forest fire in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, based on remote sensing and GIS

Satellite remote sensing technique which enables monitoring over a large area multi-temporally, was employed to map the extent of the large scale forest fire that occurred in East Kalimantan, Indonesia between mid-1997 and early 1998. GIS technique was then used to assess the damage caused by fire and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) differentiation analysis was also employed to map vegetation cover changes caused by the forest fire, using 5 scenes of Landsat TM data (13 April 1997, 3 August 1997, 26 January 1998, 11 February 1998 and 31 March 1998) and 3 scenes of JERS-1 OPS VNIR data (27 September 1996, 1 August 1997 and 5 June 1998). A GIS database was also constructed to determine the relationship between human activities and forest loss due to the fire using the overlay method. The study site covers 241 000 ha, including the Bukit Soeharto Education Forest (BSEF) and Sungai Wain Protection Forest (SWPF), which have different degrees of protection level and different types of vegetation management. According to the report of the Indonesian government, the fire damaged more than 520 000 ha of forest in the province. From the satellite remote sensing data analysis, 26.8% of land area in the study area showed vegetation decrease from february to March 1998 while 11.8% showed vegetation increase from March to June 1998 by regeneration of vegetation after the forest fire. The GIS database indicated that the vegetation change of the study site caused by the forest fire have strong relation to the conditions of vegetation management, distance form human activity zones, and terrain conditions.