PEAK-FIRE (Peat Emissions And Key Fire Impacts during El Niño)

Indonesia’s peatlands store around half of the world’s tropical peat carbon, making them important for global climate regulation. However, deforestation and drainage for agriculture have left many peatlands degraded and highly vulnerable to fire. During drought conditions, particularly those associated with El Niño events, peat soils dry out and become highly flammable. When ignited, the fires smoulder underground for weeks or even months. These fires release vast quantities of greenhouse gases and hazardous air pollutants, contributing to climate change, worsening air quality, and creating serious health and societal impacts across the region. The PEAK-fire project is an urgent research programme led by the University of Leeds and international partners to improve understanding of tropical peat fire behaviour and its environmental consequences during the developing 2026 El Niño event in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Current estimates of peat fire emissions remain highly uncertain because they rely on limited measurements of how deeply fires burn into peat soils. Burn depth is the primary factor controlling carbon losses and pollutant emissions, yet it varies according to drainage intensity, drought severity, land use and fire history.  To address this critical knowledge gap, PEAK-fire will combine field measurements, air quality monitoring and satellite observations. Researchers will collect new in-situ measurements of peat burn depth and fire emissions across a range of environmental conditions, while deploying a dense network of air quality sensors to monitor smoke exposure. These data will be integrated with satellite observations to improve regional burn depth mapping, enhance emissions estimates and evaluate air quality forecasts. The project will also provide accessible air quality information and help develop an early-warning system for peat fire smoke, supporting local communities, decision-makers and emergency responders. By reducing uncertainties in emissions estimates and improving understanding of smoke impacts, PEAK-fire will strengthen public health assessments, inform peatland management and disaster preparedness, and provide critical evidence for future climate and environmental research. The project represents a rare opportunity to capture measurements during active peat fires, generating data that will have lasting scientific and societal benefits.