Arip Muriadi
Tropical peatland is important for supporting biological diversity and endangered species while maintaining freshwater quality and hydrological integrity as well as storing carbon flux. Indonesia constitutes the largest share of tropical peat carbon. The government of the country has tried hardly to cope with various environmental and social problems related to the tropical peat forests all over the country. Yet the reality of the management and conservation has never been fully clarified. Comprehensive knowledge of tropical peatland ecosystems are yet well established. Most of previous studies were focusing on assessing the biophysical components of peatlands while little attention has been given to evaluating human motives and drivers of peatland degradation and further integrating them with biophysical research on peatland restoration and conservation. This study fills the gap by developing an integrated framework and method in which biophysical elements and human socio-cultural aspects are both emphasized. The framework is using remote sensing images for detecting biophysical elements while Public Administrative Data (PAD) to examine the social aspects of deforestation. Two elements of tropical peatland biophysical aspects are the key to the framework: landcover changes and artificial waterways. A time series of Landsat images are used to classify the land cover changes and GEOBIA (Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis technique) are developed to use advantages of High-Resolution Aerial Imageries for detecting artificial waterways. Meanwhile, PAD at local government are used for retrieving the involvements of communities in deforestation. A new base map is proposed as a feature in the Indonesia Spatial Data Infrastructure for mining huge potential spatial data from PAD into geodatabase with RT (Rukun Tetangga/Tonarigumi/隣組) as the spatial key. Using the framework and methods, a case study in Sebubus Forest was conducted in which the image analysis has successfully unveiled the detail fact of deforestation as well as the patterns of artificial waterways encroaching to the forest. The integration of PAD with the RT base map has successfully scrutinized the social factors behind the deforestation. Therefore, it can be concluded that the framework and methods can enrich existing literatures as well as contribute to the improvement of current tropical peatland conservation in Indonesian. Moreover, the new feature of spatial data infrastructure will enrich the national geodatabase with big data resources from public administrative mechanism to open the way to scrutinize geoenvironmental problems at community level.
Keywords: Tropical Peatland, Remote Sensing, Public Administrative Data, Base Map, Deforestation
- Arip, M., Wanglin, Y., & Hirose, K. (2019). Using neighborhood association area as new spatial data infrastructure to link public administrative data with GIS in Indonesia. Communications in Science and Technology, 4(1), 20–29.
- Arip, Muriadi, and Yan Wanglin. 2019. “Monitoring Artificial Waterways in Peat Forest Areas Using Geobia (Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis) Method: Case Study in Sebubus Forest, West Kalimantan.” Jurnal Borneo Administrator 15 (1): 99–116.
