INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON WETLANDS AND SUSTAINABILITY 2007

PEAT SWAMP FOREST DISTURBANCE IN KLIAS PENINSULAR, SABAH,

MALAYSIA ACROSS MULTIPLE EL-NIÑO EVENTS: A SATELLITE REMOTE
SENSING APPROACH

Mui-How Phua
http://www.ums.edu.my/spta/Dr.Phua.htm

Abstract

Klias Peninsula of Sabah contains the largest peat swamp forest in northern end of
Borneo, but was severely damaged by recurrent El-Niño fires. We employed a
multitemporal remote sensing approach based on unsupervised classification of
principal components of multitemporal NDWI for detecting at once the disturbances
on peat swamp forest occurred during the El-Niño events. The 1998 El-Niño fires
have destroyed mostly good peat swamp forest (at least 7,400 ha). Only about 400
ha of good peat swamp forest were additionally burned during the 2003 event. The
forest area burned during both events was 3,200 ha. The burned area of degraded
peat swamp forest was 3 times higher than that of the good peat swamp forest.
Susceptibility of fire in future El-Niño events is high because there is an increase in
the disturbed area of the degraded peat swamp forest.

Keywords:

School of International Tropical Forestry, Universiti Malaysia Sabah Locked Bag 2073 88999 Kota
Kinabalu Sabah, Malaysia