GAMBUT field measurement of emissions from a tropical peatland fire experiment: from ignition to spread to suppression

Yuqi Hu; Thomas E. L. Smith; Muhammad A. Santoso; Hafiz M. F. Amin; Eirik Christensen; Wuquan Cui; Dwi M. J. Purnomo; Yulianto S. Nugroho; Guillermo Rein

doi:10.1071/WF23079

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

GAMBUT field measurement of emissions from a tropical peatland fire experiment: from ignition to spread to suppression

Yuqi Hu ^A ^B , Thomas E. L. Smith ^C , Muhammad A. Santoso ^A ^D , Hafiz M. F. Amin ^A ^E , Eirik Christensen ^A , Wuquan Cui ^A , Dwi M. J. Purnomo ^A , Yulianto S. Nugroho

^D and Guillermo Rein

^A ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

^B Sichuan Fire Research Institution, Ministry of Emergency Management of China, Chengdu, 610036, China.

^C Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.

^D Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, 16424, Indonesia.

^E School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, TS1 3BA, UK.

^* Correspondence to: g.rein@imperial.ac.uk

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF23079 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23079

Submitted: 23 May 2023 Accepted: 5 August 2024 Published: 22 October 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY)

Abstract

Background

Accurate quantification of emissions from peatland wildfire is crucial for understanding their feedback to the atmospheric and Earth system. However, current knowledge on this topic is limited to a few laboratory and field studies, which report substantial variability in terms of the fire emission factors (EFs).

Aims

We aim to understand how emissions vary across the life cycle of a peatland fire.

Methods

In August/September 2018, we conducted the largest and longest to-date field-scale experimental burn on a tropical peatland in Sumatra, Indonesia. Field measurements of gas emissions from the fire experiment were conducted using an open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy to retrieve mole fractions of 11 gas species.

Key results

For the first time, we calculated and reported EFs from 40 measurement sessions conducted over 2 weeks of burning, encompassing different fire stages (e.g. ignition, smouldering spread, and suppression) and weather events (e.g. rainfall). Our findings provide field evidence to indicate that EFs vary significantly among fire stages and weather events. We also observed that the heterogeneous physicochemical properties of peatland site (e.g. moisture content) influenced the EFs. We also found that modified combustion efficiency was highly sensitive to complex field variables and could introduce large uncertainties when determining the regimes of a peat fire.

Conclusions and implications

Further studies to investigate peat fire emissions are needed, and more comprehensive mapping of peatland heterogeneity and land use for emissions inventories, accounting for spatial and temporal variability in EFs since the initiation of a fire event is required.

Keywords: degraded peatland, emission factor, field measurement, fire emissions, fire spread, fire suppression, ignition, peat, weather effect.

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