Landcover Pattern Analysis of Tropical Peat Swamp Lands in Southeast Asia

Tropical peat swamp lands in the Southeast Asia which store tremendous large amount of carbon in their peat layer and abundant biodiversity are now endangered by human activities such as deforestation, forest fires, land development and urbanization. To earlier start a better environmental policy for conservation of nature of the tropical peat swamp area is one of the preferential global issues. This study aimed at 1) clarifying the state of the tropical peat swamp area in terms of the areas of each land cover categories, and 2) locating the regions where environment have been severely damaged or lands have been extensively developed. Some digital environmental data such as GeoCover, GeoCover LC, SRTM, digital soil maps and so on were analyzed to estimate land cover maps of fine scale around 2000 region by region. As a result of this analysis, following characteristic on the land cover pattern in the Southeast Asia are clarified. (1) The total area of the tropical peat swamp lands in the Southeast Asia are estimated to be 25,119,825ha. 43.1% of them is in Papua, Indonesia, 22.5% is in Sumatra, 22% is in Borneo, Indonesia. Others are in Peninsular, Malaysia, Thailand, and Borneo, Malaysia. (2) 15,181,388 ha of the tropical peat swamp area in the Southeast Asia is covered with Forest. 3,346,831 ha is with the Swamp forest mixed with bush. 4,866,988 ha is with the Bush, Secondary forest including Industrial forest. 822,756 ha is with Bare land and Buildup area. 467,244 ha is with Agricultural lands such as mixed garden, oil palm plantation and developed lands. 434,619ha is Grass land. These estimates mean that 73.7% of the tropical peat swamp area is remaining as densely vegetated land and the rest of 26.3% of area has been already developed for human activities such as industrial forest, urban and buildup area or agricultural lands. Moreover, 6.9% of the tropical peat swamp area in the Southeast Asia has non-vegetation or poor vegetation; that 93.1% of the tropical peat swamp land is still covered with rather vegetation. (3) Using with the SRTM90 data, the acreages of land covers in TPSA distributed in the Southeast Asia up to 100m a.s.l were computed. Consequently, almost land covers in the tropical peat swamp area expand in lower lands than 50m a.s.l. in every region, and 6.87 million ha in the TPSA in the Southeast Asia is occupied by developed lands.