Two decades of destruction in Southeast Asia's peat swamp forests
We used landâcover maps and active fire detection based on satellite imagery to evaluate the rates and spatial distribution of peatland deforestation in Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2010. Over this time period, the proportion of forest cover in the peatlands of Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo fell from 77% to 36%. After two decades of extensive deforestation (31 000 km²; 4.9% yrâ»Â¹) strongly associated with fire activity, Sumatra has been left with just 28% of its historical forested peatlands.