remote sensing

Carbon Storage in the Northern Sebangau Area between Tangkiling and Kasongan, Central Kalimantan, 8-2006

91 peat drillings 200m from the highway and every 500m distance, Landsat image from 2003

Indonesia Keywords: Peat Land Topography, Peat Drilling, Carbon Storage, Airborne Laser Scanner (ALS) ABSTRACT Tropical Peatland has been accumulated between the Rivers Rungan and Katingan in Central Kalimantan during the last 10,000 years.

Since the 1980s peatland and Peat Swamp Forest (PSF) is being cleared for the construction of the Kalimantan highway between the rivers Rungan (at Tangkiling) and Katingan (at Kasongan). Before then access to that area of peatland was only possible by boat (Sieffermann et al. 1988, Rieley and Page 1997, Rieley et al. 2001, Boehm et al. 2005). Since then land development projects have taken place in form of human settlements, agricultural activities and plantations, which have greatly increased the risk of peatland fires during the dry season. In 1997 and 2002 El Niño prolonged the dry season considerably increasing the risk of fire. With the help of Remote Sensing and a Geographical Information System (GIS) an exact survey is possible, providing information as to the changes in the landscapes and the condition of the environment and an integrated planning and management program can be achieved.

To understand better the situation of that area peat drillings parallel to the Kalimantan highway along the transect Tangkiling and Kasongan have been done in 2006. Results of these peat measurements showed a peat depth up to 8.10 m at km53.5. The estimation of stored peat volume and carbon for the northern Sebangau Catchment and Palangka Raya between Katingan and Rungan rivers up to the border of the heath forest is 7.1 Gm³ (res. 5.93 Gm³) peat volume. The content of carbon in 1 cubic meter of peat has been measured to be 154.3kg. We found a stored Carbon value of 0.92 to 1.1 Gtons for this area. The pH-values of water were very acidic and three soil samples showed a very low nutritional value. It will be necessary to rehabilitate this fragile peatland ecosystem. To measure the topography of the peat land under the PSF it is proposed to use a high-resolution Airborne Laser-Scanner (ALS). With this device the z-range resolution (height) measurement can be increased to a value better than +/-0.15m. This laser-scanner can measure the height of the PSF at the canopy area with the first echo and the peat surface and peat dome with the last echo. Tree height of the PSF can be obtained by subtracting the two echoes and the bio-mass by multiplication height x area. With the additional peat depth drillings, this method will evaluate the amount of stored Carbon in peatland better than the presently used methodology. High quality hydrological models can be analysed with this method and thus offer a better understanding of peatlands (Boehm 2006). Laser-scanner technology has come out of the research phase and is now fully mature.