Analysis of the Severity Level of Land Fires

Indonesia is the third country ranked in the world for the largest tropical forest. However, the area of forests in Indonesia is decreasing. One of the causes is forest and land fires (Karhutla). Judging from history, forest and land fires are a recurring phenomenon in all forested areas of Indonesia. The fires that occur in Mount Merbabu National Park that occur almost every year are a serious problem, especially in the dry months. It was recorded that during the last ten years, namely between September 2014 and September 2019, there were 4 quite large fires. By looking at these problems, we conducted research to estimate fires in Mount Merbabu National Park based on remote sensing. Using the Sentinel-2 imagery time series, which is June - September 2019, a classification of forest fire severity with an accuracy of 80,64% was obtained based on Overall Accuracy and Kappa hat Classification. This shows that the algorithm applied in this study has great potential for other studies in the future.

To obtain the conditions before and after the fire outbreak as shown in figures, it is necessary to determine the acquisition date of the imagery. Therefore, hotspot data in the Mount Merbabu area obtained from TERRA/MODIS, LAPAN Fire Hotspot which detected 2 high-level heat points in the Mount Merbabu area on October 23, 2019, is required.

In figures, it is shown that the spread of fire tends towards the southeast and northeast directions. Meanwhile, other areas around Mount Merbabu are affected, reaching a moderate-high severity level. Generally, wildfires occur during the dry season, from July to September, peaking in September. These fires can be caused by several factors, including high temperatures, climate, topography, soil activity, and burning activities for livestock feed or anthropogenic reasons. Additionally, the massive spread of fire occurs due to high wind intensity during the fire outbreak.

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