In 1997-98, fires associated with an exceptional drought caused by the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) devastated large areas of tropical rain forests worldwide. Evidence suggests that in tropical rainforest environments selective logging may lead to an increased susceptibility of forests to fire. We investigated whether this was true in the Indonesian fires, the largest fire disaster ever observed. We performed a multiscale analysis using coarse- and high-resolution optical and radar satellite imagery assisted by ground and aerial surveys to assess the extent of the fire-damaged area and the effect on vegetation in East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. A total of 5.2 plus or minus 0.3 million hectares including 2.6 million hectares of forest was burned with varying degrees of damage. Forest fires primarily affected recently logged forests; primary forests or those logged long ago were less affected. These results support the hypothesis of positive feedback between logging and fire occurrence. The fires severely damaged the remaining forests and significantly increased the risk of recurrent fire disasters by leaving huge amounts of dead flammable wood.
Keyword(s)
tropical rain forests, Sustainability Science Abstracts, Oceanic Abstracts, Ecology Abstracts, Meteorological & Geoastrophysical Abstracts, ASFA 3: Aquatic Pollution & Environmental Quality, ASFA 2: Ocean Technology Policy & Non-Living Resources, Human Population, Forests, Aerial surveys, Southern Oscillation, Forest fires, El Nino-Southern Oscillation event-drought relationships, Man-induced effects, Droughts, Fires, Fire damage, Rain forests, Forest industry, Logging, Human impact, Borneo, Satellite sensing, Indonesia, Kalimantan, El Nino phenomena, Anthropogenic factors, Environmental stress, Fire, Indonesia, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, O 4090:Conservation and Environmental Protection, M2 551.526:Water Surface Temperature (551.526), M2 551.577:General Precipitation (551.577), Q5 08521:Mechanical and natural changes, M2 551.513:General Circulation (551.513), M3 1010:Issues in Sustainable Development, M1 200:Human Population-Biosphere Interactions, D 04712:Environmental degradation, Q2 09127:General papers on resources