World’s Soil Resources

Peat fire is another important process that may cause a huge amount of carbon loss in a short period of
time, and the literature is in agreement on the importance of peat fire as one of the main causes of peat
carbon loss (Page et al., 2002; Hooijer et al., 2014). However, determination of peat C loss through peat fire is
a future research challenge, especially with regards to gathering firm data, for example on the volume (area
and depth) of burnt scars (IPCC, 2014).
Land cover type 1
Drained forest land
and cleared forest land
(shrubland)
Plantations, drained,
unknown or long
rotations
Plantations, drained,
short rotations,
e.g. acacia
Plantations, drained,
oil palm
Plantations, shallowdrained
(typically less
than 0.3 m), typically
used for agriculture,
e.g. sago palm
Cropland and fallow,
drained
Cropland, drained,
paddy rice
Emission
(Mg CO 2
-C ha -1 yr -1 )
95 percent Confidence level 2
(Mg CO 2
-C ha -1 yr -1 )
5.3 -0.7 9.5
15 10 21
20 16 24
11 5.6 17
1.5 -2.3 5.4
14 6.6 26
9.4 -0.2 20
Grassland, drained 9.6 4.5 17
Table 10.3 Emission factors of drained tropical peatland under different land uses and the 95 percent confidential interval. Source:
IPCC, 2014.
1) Emission of primary peat forest is assumed to be zero.
2) Some confidence intervals contain negative values because calculation was based on error propagation of uncertainties.
However, all underlying CO 2
fluxes were positive.
Status of the World’s Soil Resources | Main Report Regional Assessment of Soil Changes
309
in Asia