Indonesia ranks as the 3RD largest CO2EQ emitting nation, largely due to episodic uncontrolled fires within drained peat-swamp forests. The original project (NNX13AP46G) set out to 1) provide…

This federal contract award, valued at $1,310,962.22, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), a division of the University System of Maryland (USM). The award supports a research project focused on improving Indonesia's monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) capabilities for peatland carbon emissions to support nationwide Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) efforts. The research involves field investigations of land cover, hydrology, fuels, and fire dynamics in peatland areas, as well as detailed emissions sampling and modeling. The project aims to generate comprehensive and accurate emissions factors for Indonesia's major peatland regions, which will inform assessments of health impacts and global warming potential. This contract does not have a set-aside designation.

Indonesia ranks as the 3RD largest CO2EQ emitting nation, largely due to episodic uncontrolled fires within drained peat-swamp forests. The original project (NNX13AP46G) set out to 1) provide extensive field investigation of land cover, hydrologic, fuel and fire dynamics in a 120,000 HA redd+ project in central kalimantan; 2) collect a new lidar dataset to complement our existing 2007 and 2011 coverages; 3) conduct groundbreaking detailed emissions field sampling of smoldering in-situ peat fires; and 4) generate a fully parameterized and validated annual emissions model for the study region in support of its redd+ project. Despite extensive bureaucratic and logistical challenges and delays inherent in working in indonesia, objectives 1-3 have now been completed and the modeling efforts are ongoing with all necessary data now in hand as we complete the original project time period. However, our recent unprecedented emission findings (stockwell ET AL. 2016), gained in situ during the height of the 2015 EL NI o, have documented substantial differences between the actual regional peat fire emissions and existing emission factors, indicating regional indonesian carbon equivalent emissions (100 year) may have been 19% less than current ipcc-based emission factor estimates. The ipcc emission factors are derived from one lab study burning peat from sumatra (christian ET AL. 2003) and considerable variation in emissions may exist between peat fires of indonesia s three major peat formations highlighting the need for the additional field emissions measurements we intend to carry out in the continuation of the project proposed here. We propose expanding to a national level, our successful regional (kalimantan) CMS project (NNX13AP46G), to better advance indonesia s monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) capabilities for peatland carbon emissions and support nationwide reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (redd) efforts. We will implement our standardized field-based analyses of fuels, hydrology, peat burning characteristics and fire emissions, developed from our ongoing work in a 120,000 HA redd + project, to regionally parameterize our peatland emissions model for all of indonesia s major peatland areas by including three new locations, riau and jambi (sumatra) and western papua (papua), for inclusion within the indonesian national carbon accounting system (incas). We will conduct on-site whole air sampling of natural peat smoke plumes in situ for precise measurement of nonreactive greenhouse gases, collect peat samples just in front of these active peat fires, and burn the samples in the US while measuring aerosol mass and optical properties and reactive gases. This will create comprehensive and pertinent emissions factors (EFS) for each study region that will be critically important for assessing health impacts and total global warming potential (GWP) of these emissions. Remotely sensed land cover/change (landsat) and surface fire ignition timing and locations (modis) provide spatial and temporal drivers for the modelled emissions that will now be validated/constrained at a national level using biomass burning emissions estimations derived from visible/infrared imager and radiometer suite (viirs) on board the suomi national polarorbiting partnership (NPP) satellite and the new japanese geostationary meteorological satellite (himawari-8). Multiple lidar datasets (2014, 2011, 2007) for kalimantan are being used to quantify model accuracy, and new work will be undertaken to quantify uncertainty in our most recent lidar-based digital terrain model (DTM), further improving assessments of modelling errors.