Tropical Peat Moisture Profiles for Early Information of Drought in Indonesia

Tropical peatland is one of the main factors in global climate regulation. However, a repeatable large-scale fire as a result of land clearing and poor management practices rapidly devastates tropical peatlands in Indonesia. To restore this ecosystem, Indonesia government makes special actions by doing three activities, namely rewetting, replantation, and communal empowerment. These activities need real-time and actual information of peat moisture. Therefore, we investigated the soil moisture profile in Ogan Komering Ilir, South Sumatera Province, Indonesia. We measured soil moisture at four different soil layers, namely 5-cm, 15-cm, 25-cm, and 35-cm soil layer along with two types of land covers, namely acacia and oil palm. Results indicated that the variance of 15-cm was lower than other soil layers. Therefore, the soil moisture in the layer of 15-cm soil layer can be used as preliminary information of drought in tropical peatland, Indonesia.