PLoS One. 2026 Apr 8;21(4):e0331831. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0331831. eCollection 2026.
ABSTRACT
Wildfires pose a major challenge for many nations. Rapid mapping of their extent is key to evaluating their impacts. We present the first operational monthly burned-area processing chain for Indonesia, based on largely automated processing of Sentinel-2 imagery in Google Earth Engine. Our approach uses a Random Forest applied to Sentinel-2 imagery and integrates FIRMS fire hotspots to reduce false positives. The resulting 20-m monthly burned-area maps cover the entire country. From January 2019 to December 2024, fires burned a cumulative 5.62 million hectares (Mha), including 2.92 Mha that burned once and 1.12 Mha that burned multiple times. This represents a total burned extent of 4.04 Mha. Compared to the MCD64A1 product, our dataset detects more burns with higher spatial detail and accuracy. In total, 122,164 hectares of primary humid forest burned, representing 2.2% of the burned area. In 2019 and 2023, fire activity accelerated around July and peaked in September-October, coinciding with Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) values ≥ +0.5 °C and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) values ≥ +1.5°C. In contrast, neutral or negative phases from 2020 to 2022 corresponded with minimal burning. The year 2024 recorded intermediate fire activity without strong climatic anomalies. These findings confirm that climatic anomalies are associated with fire activity in Indonesia, reaffirming the importance of ONI and IOD for early warning. Our results suggest that prevention efforts are limiting forest fires, as burns in 2019 and 2023 remained lower than during earlier events. Monthly burn-scar updates are available on Nusantara Atlas (www.nusantara-atlas.org), an open-access platform for monitoring deforestation in Southeast Asia.
PMID:41950337 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0331831
