Qualla: The Forests That Burn Underground

The Forests That Burn Underground: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The fire travels underground. That is the fact that makes Borneo's peat swamp forests unlike any other burning landscape on Earth. Dried-out peat ignites easily enough on the surface, but then it descends, smoldering through meters of compressed organic matter, crawling invisibly beneath the ground to erupt in locations no one predicted. During the catastrophic fires of 1997-1998, driven by El Nino drought and accelerated by Indonesia's Mega Rice Project, these subterranean blazes released between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere -- equivalent to 13 to 40 percent of the entire world's annual fossil fuel emissions. The largest single-year spike in atmospheric CO2 since records began in 1957 was not caused by cars or factories. It was caused, in significant part, by the burning of ancient swamp.

Image: Public domain

The Forests That Burn Underground: Twenty Meters of Accumulated Time

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Every-leaf-that-trembles, CC BY-SA 4.0. Peat swamp forests form where waterlogged soil prevents dead vegetation from fully decomposing. Leaves fall, branches snap, trees topple -- and instead of rotting, this organic material compresses into thick, acidic beds of peat that can reach 20 meters deep, with pH levels as lo...

Image: Every-leaf-that-trembles | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Forests That Burn Underground: Seventy-Meter Giants in Spongy Ground

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JeremiahsCPs, CC BY-SA 3.0. These are not the bleak, mossy bogs of northern Europe. Borneo's peat swamp forests support trees up to 70 meters tall, rooted in substrate so spongy and unstable that they require buttresses, stilt roots, and pneumatophores just to stay upright. Despite the extreme acidity and l...

Image: JeremiahsCPs | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Forests That Burn Underground: The Mega Rice Project and Its Aftermath

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ruanda Agung Sugardiman/AusAID, CC BY 2.0. In the mid-1990s, the Indonesian government launched the Mega Rice Project, draining over one million hectares of peat swamp forest in Kalimantan for conversion to rice paddies. Between 1996 and 1998, workers dug more than 4,000 kilometers of drainage and irrigation channels. The...

Image: Ruanda Agung Sugardiman/AusAID | CC BY 2.0

The Forests That Burn Underground: Smoke That Crossed Borders

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MODIS Rapid Response Team, Public domain. When the drained peatlands caught fire during the El Nino droughts of 1997-1998 and again in 2002-2003, the consequences reached far beyond Borneo. Dense smoke and haze blanketed Southeast Asia for months, causing respiratory problems among half a million people. Satellite imager...

Image: MODIS Rapid Response Team | Public domain