Monitoring of peatland and peat fires requires the collection of location-specific social and economic data as well as biophysical data at many scales to better understand the human actions and biophysical drivers of fires in tropical peatlands.
The social dimension is of great importance because peatland fires do not start naturally, but through human actions. For example, wet peatlands in which people start fires are low risk, but equally, so are dry peatlands where people do not start fires.
For this reason, Indonesia is now studying which social and economic elements should be incorporated into the standard Fire Danger Rating System (FDRS) by collecting data about livelihoods and economic patterns and trends for thousands of villages. In this way, it is possible to prioritize areas of high fire probability for effective fire management planning.
