Peatland Fires Darken Skies in Indonesia

Meta Title: Indonesia’s Peatland Fires: Why Drought Creates Persistent Smoke
Meta Description: Drought-driven peatland fires in Indonesia can burn above and below ground, producing persistent haze, harmful air pollution, and significant carbon emissions.
URL Slug: indonesia-peatland-fires-drought-smoke
Excerpt: NASA imagery and observations highlight how drought can intensify fires in Indonesia’s peatlands. Unlike ordinary vegetation fires, peat fires may smolder underground for weeks or longer, complicating firefighting efforts and affecting air quality across the region.

## Peatland Fires Darken Skies in Indonesia

Indonesia’s peatlands are among the world’s most important carbon-rich ecosystems. But during prolonged dry periods, these normally waterlogged landscapes can become highly vulnerable to fire.

A NASA item on peatland fires in Indonesia describes fires smoldering both on the surface and underground as drought grips parts of the country. That distinction matters. Fires in peat are not always fast-moving flames visible from a distance. They can burn slowly beneath the ground, release dense smoke, and re-emerge at the surface after firefighters believe an area has been contained.

The resulting haze can darken skies, reduce visibility, worsen air quality, disrupt transportation, and affect communities far beyond the original fire zone.

## Why Indonesia’s Peatlands Are Especially Fire-Prone During Drought

Peat forms where partially decayed plant material accumulates in wet conditions over centuries or millennia. Indonesia has extensive tropical peatlands, particularly on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua.

When peatlands remain wet, they act as natural carbon stores and can help regulate water flows. Their high water table makes ignition difficult. Problems arise when drought, drainage, land conversion, or a combination of these factors lowers the water table.

As peat dries, the organic material becomes combustible.

Surface vegetation, such as grasses, shrubs, and forest litter, may ignite first. Fire can then spread downward into the peat layer itself. Because peat is made of dense, carbon-rich organic matter, it can continue smoldering with relatively little oxygen. This is known as a “holdover” or underground fire, and it is one reason peatland fires are so difficult to control.

A conventional wildfire may be extinguished by suppressing flames along its edge. A peat fire often requires rewetting the landscape and saturating the burning material—an operation that can be technically difficult over large, remote areas.

## Smoke Is Often the Most Immediate Threat

The most visible effect of peatland fires is frequently the smoke.

Peat fires can emit large amounts of fine particulate matter, including PM2.5: particles small enough to travel deep into the lungs. Exposure to elevated PM2.5 is associated with respiratory and cardiovascular health risks, especially for children, older adults, pregnant people, and those with asthma, chronic lung disease, or heart conditions.

Smoke can also contain carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and other gases and compounds produced by incomplete combustion. Conditions can change rapidly depending on wind direction, rain, local fire activity, and atmospheric stability.

For communities in Indonesia and neighboring countries, haze can mean reduced visibility at airports and on roads, school closures, limits on outdoor work, and public-health advisories. During severe regional haze events in past years, smoke from fires in Indonesia has crossed national borders, affecting air quality in parts of Malaysia, Singapore, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The source item indicates that skies are being darkened by fires during drought conditions. It does not, from the summary alone, provide a complete accounting of the affected area, the number of active fire locations, emissions totals, or health impacts. Those measurements typically require a combination of satellite observations, ground-based air-quality monitoring, weather analysis, and reports from local agencies.

## Why Underground Peat Fires Can Last So Long

Peat fires differ from many forest fires because they can continue burning beneath the surface.

A fire can travel through dry peat layers slowly and unevenly, sometimes beneath vegetation that appears unburned from above. The low-temperature combustion produces thick, persistent smoke. It may also leave the ground unstable, because burned peat can create voids below the surface.

Rain can reduce fire activity, but brief rainfall may not be enough to fully extinguish a deep peat fire. If the water table remains low, smoldering can continue or restart when dry weather returns.

This is why peatland restoration projects often focus on hydrology as well as firefighting. Blocking drainage canals, restoring water flow, and maintaining higher water levels can reduce the chance that peat dries to the point of ignition.

## Satellites Help Track Fire and Smoke Across Remote Areas

NASA’s Earth-observing satellites are valuable tools for monitoring fires that occur across broad and often inaccessible landscapes.

Instruments such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, have long provided observations of thermal anomalies—commonly called hotspots—that can indicate active fire. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, or VIIRS, provides additional fire-detection capability at finer spatial detail.

Satellite imagery can also reveal smoke plumes and changing vegetation conditions. Scientists combine these observations with rainfall records, drought indicators, land-cover maps, and atmospheric models to understand where fire risks are increasing and where smoke may travel.

However, a hotspot is not a complete measure of a fire’s size or severity. Cloud cover can obscure satellites, and underground smoldering may be difficult to detect directly. Likewise, not every detected thermal signal represents a large wildfire. Field reports and local monitoring remain essential for confirming conditions on the ground.

## The Climate Significance of Burning Peat

Indonesia’s peatlands hold substantial stores of carbon accumulated over long periods. When peat burns, carbon that had been locked in the ground can be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and other gases.

That makes peat fires important not only as a local air-quality emergency, but also as a climate concern.

The amount of emissions from any particular fire season depends on the extent of burned land, peat depth, moisture conditions, combustion intensity, and how long fires continue. Estimating totals is complex, and early estimates may be revised as satellite and ground data improve.

Protecting intact peatlands can therefore serve several goals at once: reducing fire risk, limiting carbon emissions, preserving biodiversity, and supporting water management. Healthy peat ecosystems are also important habitat for a range of plants and animals, including species already under pressure from deforestation and land fragmentation.

## Prevention Depends on Water, Land Management, and Preparedness

Fire response remains necessary during drought, but prevention is more effective than attempting to suppress widespread peat fires after they begin.

Key measures include restoring degraded peatlands, maintaining high water tables, monitoring drained areas during dry conditions, improving early-warning systems, and supporting local fire-prevention programs. Land-management practices are also central. Avoiding the use of fire for land clearing reduces one important ignition source, especially when landscapes are unusually dry.

Weather patterns can intensify the challenge. El Niño conditions, for example, are often associated with drier weather in parts of Indonesia, though the effects vary by season and location. Long-term climate change may also influence heat, rainfall variability, and drought risk, making resilient peatland management increasingly important.

## A Fire Problem That Extends Beyond the Flames

The NASA report is a reminder that the most damaging aspect of a peatland fire may not be the flames themselves. It can be the smoke carried across communities, the carbon released from ancient organic deposits, and the difficulty of extinguishing fires that continue below ground.

Drought does not guarantee a severe fire season, and satellites alone cannot provide a full picture of impacts. But dry peatlands create conditions in which fires can become persistent, difficult to contain, and consequential well beyond their point of origin.

Maintaining wet peatlands is one of the clearest ways to reduce that risk before smoke fills the sky.

## Authority sources (external links):

– [NASA’s report on peatland fires darkening skies in Indonesia](https://science.nasa.gov/missions/aqua/peatland-fires-darken-skies-in-indonesia/)
– [NASA FIRMS global fire-monitoring data and maps](https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/)
– [European Space Agency overview of the Copernicus Sentinel-5P atmospheric mission](https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P)
– [World Health Organization guidance on ambient air pollution and particulate matter](https