Assessing costs of Indonesian fires and the benefits of restoring peatland

Kiely, L.; Spracklen, D. V.; Arnold, S. R.; Papargyropoulou, E.; Conibear, L.; Wiedinmyer, C.; Knote, C.; Adrianto, H. A.

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27353-x

i

Assessing costs of Indonesian fires and the benefits of restoring peatland

2021
By Kiely, L. ; Spracklen, D. V. ; Arnold, S. R. ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Nature Communications
Personal Author:

Kiely, L. ; Spracklen, D. V. ; Arnold, S. R. ; Papargyropoulou, E. ; Conibear, L. ; Wiedinmyer, C. ; Knote, C. ; Adrianto, H. A.
NOAA Program & Office:

CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
Description:

Deforestation and drainage has made Indonesian peatlands susceptible to burning. Large fires occur regularly, destroying agricultural crops and forest, emitting large amounts of CO2and air pollutants, resulting in adverse health effects. In order to reduce fire, the Indonesian government has committed to restore 2.49 Mha of degraded peatland, with an estimated cost of US$3.2-7 billion. Here we combine fire emissions and land cover data to estimate the 2015 fires, the largest in recent years, resulted in economic losses totalling US$28 billion, whilst the six largest fire events between 2004 and 2015 caused a total of US$93.9 billion in economic losses. We estimate that if restoration had already been completed, the area burned in 2015 would have been reduced by 6%, reducing CO2emissions by 18%, and PM2.5emissions by 24%, preventing 12,000 premature mortalities. Peatland restoration could have resulted in economic savings of US$8.4 billion for 2004–2015, making it a cost-effective strategy for reducing the impacts of peatland fires to the environment, climate and human health.
Source:

Nature Communications, 12(1)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27353-x
ISSN:

2041-1723
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Document Type:

Journal Article
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:a506dca5779d8001cc6450989875a5245bab69bc526ca454e775e8ee843cd2add37394b26e9746e3e14dd9e523a28dad15c1486dcf9dbc95509f75aadcdc8bf2
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/68743/noaa_68743_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 1.23 MB ]

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