Land Changes Monitoring Using MODIS Time-series Imagery in Peat Lands Areas, Muaro Jambi, Jambi Province, Indonesia

Function of peat land as the global climate regulator has been threatened by human activities through deforestation and forest degradation, including the peat lands in the Berbak National Park, Muaro Jambi. This area is covered by 110,000 hectares of peat lands. This study aimed to monitor the land changes using MODIS time-series datasets from 2001 to 2013. The study used the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), which describes vegetation water content associated with rainfall. The results show that NDWI is quite sensitive to represent the changes in peat land, including seasonal changes. Most of the land changes was detected in August-October by the method. In many cases, it was necessarily coincident with the low rainfall and hotspot occurrences. Moreover, the land changes in peat land areas represent the temporal complexity affected by extreme climate variability, when it related with a high number of fires.