SPATIAL MODELING OF THE THREAT OF DAMAGE TO THE PEATLAND ECOSYSTEM IN THE MAINLAND OF BENGKALIS REGENCY, RIAU PROVINCE

Abstract

Peatlands are the stretch of ecosystem landscape with unique characteristics, both physically, chemically, and biodiversity. Anthropogenic activities in peatland use and disasters pose a threat to the preservation of the peatland ecosystem, which has impacts toward abiotic to the element of biodiversity (biotic). The purpose of this research is to model how the threat of the peatland ecosystem by using spatial data modeling. The method in this research using cloud-based GIS data analysis from Google earth engine, modeling distance parameter to variable modeling of interaction among landscapes on the peatland, and weight sum the value over raster-based spatial layer to determinate the thereat in the peatland ecosystem. The results of this study found zones where hot spots often occur. Modeling with euclidean distance to all modeling variables (except temperature) gives a clear effect on how the threats from each landscape interact with each other. We found that the threat of peatland damage in the high threat class dominates the plantation area reaching 30.9% of the total peatland area, whereas the forest landscape only has a high threat with a percentage of 1.9% and a low threat which the ecosystem is stable and natural reaching over 34.7 %. From this model, we succeeded in bringing up the idea to determine the priority area for policies where need to be done in handling the protection of peatland ecosystems, especially in plantations where the highest percentage of the ecosystem threat is in the high level with integrated peatland management.

Keywords: Peatland ecosystem, landscape, threat