Nov 11, 2020
PeatFire article published in International Journal of Wildland Fire
![Peat fire in Indonesia. The fires are below the surface where the peat smoulders.](https://tu-dresden.de/bu/umwelt/forst/ww/bsa/ressourcen/bilder/Projekte/Peat_fire_in_Selangor-_Malaysia_on_5_June_2013.JPG/@@images/0074fd07-f0d2-4840-bde9-fb8de7d816cc.jpeg)
Peat fire in Indonesia. The fires are below the surface where the peat smoulders.
Peat fires cause significant environmental and health impacts at local to global scales. Kirana Widyastuti and her co-workers now present an agent-based model that simulates the interaction between human-induced ignitions, fire and peat characteristics to study the relative importance of key factors controlling tropical peatland burning events. They test their model with spatio-temporal fire patterns observed in Southern Sumatra in 2015 and show how a moderate fire event can suddenly turn into a complete burning.
Widyastuti, K., Imron, M. A., Pradopo, S. T., Suryatmojo, H., Sopha, B. M., Spessa, A., & Berger, U. (2020). PeatFire: an agent-based model to simulate fire ignition and spreading in a tropical peatland ecosystem. International Journal of Wildland Fire.
The PeatFire ABM is available at GitHub: https://peatfire-abm.github.io/