Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis
Cambodia has the most fires per area in Southeast Asia, with fire activity have significantly increased since the early 2000s. Wildfire occurrences are multi-factorial in nature, and isolating the relative contribution of each driver remains a challenge. In this study, we quantify the relative impor...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171754 |
| _version_ | 1811678648499961856 |
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| author | Sim, Min-Sung Wee, Shi Jun Alcantara, Enner Park, Edward |
| author2 | Asian School of the Environment |
| author_facet | Asian School of the Environment Sim, Min-Sung Wee, Shi Jun Alcantara, Enner Park, Edward |
| author_sort | Sim, Min-Sung |
| collection | NTU |
| description | Cambodia has the most fires per area in Southeast Asia, with fire activity have significantly increased since the early 2000s. Wildfire occurrences are multi-factorial in nature, and isolating the relative contribution of each driver remains a challenge. In this study, we quantify the relative importance of each driver of fire by analyzing annual spatial regression models of fire occurrence across Cambodia from 2003 to 2020. Our models demonstrated satisfactory performance, explaining 69 to 81% of the variance in fire occurrence. We found that deforestation was consistently the dominant driver of fire across 48 to 70% of the country throughout the study period. Although the influence of low precipitation on fires has increased in 2019 and 2020, the period is not long enough to establish any significant trends. During the study period, wind speed, elevation, and soil moisture had a slight influence of 6–20% without any clear trend, indicating that deforestation continues to be the main driver of fire. Our study improves the current understanding of the drivers of biomass fires across Cambodia, and the methodological framework developed here (quantitative decoupling of the drivers) has strong potential to be applied to other fire-prone areas around the world. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:56:36Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/171754 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T02:56:36Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1717542023-11-13T15:30:40Z Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis Sim, Min-Sung Wee, Shi Jun Alcantara, Enner Park, Edward Asian School of the Environment Earth Observatory of Singapore Social sciences::Geography Cambodia Wildfire Cambodia has the most fires per area in Southeast Asia, with fire activity have significantly increased since the early 2000s. Wildfire occurrences are multi-factorial in nature, and isolating the relative contribution of each driver remains a challenge. In this study, we quantify the relative importance of each driver of fire by analyzing annual spatial regression models of fire occurrence across Cambodia from 2003 to 2020. Our models demonstrated satisfactory performance, explaining 69 to 81% of the variance in fire occurrence. We found that deforestation was consistently the dominant driver of fire across 48 to 70% of the country throughout the study period. Although the influence of low precipitation on fires has increased in 2019 and 2020, the period is not long enough to establish any significant trends. During the study period, wind speed, elevation, and soil moisture had a slight influence of 6–20% without any clear trend, indicating that deforestation continues to be the main driver of fire. Our study improves the current understanding of the drivers of biomass fires across Cambodia, and the methodological framework developed here (quantitative decoupling of the drivers) has strong potential to be applied to other fire-prone areas around the world. Ministry of Education (MOE) National Research Foundation (NRF) Published version We wish to acknowledge the financial support for this study from the Ministry of Education of Singapore (#Tier2 MOE-T2EP402A20-0001). This study was supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Funds Tier 1 (#2021-T1-001-056 and #RG142/22 to EP), Tier2 576 (#MOE-T2EP402A20-0001 and #MOE-T2EP50222-0025) and the Earth Observatory of Singapore via its funding from the National Research Foundation Singapore under the Research Centres of Excellence Initiatives. 2023-11-07T02:50:12Z 2023-11-07T02:50:12Z 2023 Journal Article Sim, M., Wee, S. J., Alcantara, E. & Park, E. (2023). Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis. Remote Sensing, 15(13), 3388-. https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs15133388 2072-4292 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171754 10.3390/rs15133388 2-s2.0-85164935412 13 15 3388 en MOE-T2EP402A20-0001 2021-T1-001-056 RG142/22 MOE-T2EP402A20-0001 MOE-T2EP50222-0025 Remote Sensing © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Social sciences::Geography Cambodia Wildfire Sim, Min-Sung Wee, Shi Jun Alcantara, Enner Park, Edward Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title | Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title_full | Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title_fullStr | Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title_full_unstemmed | Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title_short | Deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in Cambodia, revealed through geospatial analysis |
| title_sort | deforestation as the prominent driver of the intensifying wildfire in cambodia revealed through geospatial analysis |
| topic | Social sciences::Geography Cambodia Wildfire |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/171754 |
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