UNASSIGNED: Tropical peatland fires play a significant role in the context of global warming through emissions of substantial amounts of greenhouse gases. However, the state of knowledge on @entity505 loss from these fires is still poorly developed with few studies reporting the associated mass of peat consumed. Furthermore, spatial and temporal variations in burn depth have not been previously quantified. This study presents the first spatially explicit investigation of fire-driven tropical peat loss and its variability. An extensive airborne Light Detection and Ranging data set was used to develop a prefire peat surface modelling methodology, enabling the spatially differentiated quantification of @entity4808 over the entire burned area. We observe a strong interdependence between @entity4808 , fire frequency and distance to drainage canals. For the first time, we show that relative @entity4808 decreases over the first four fire events and is constant thereafter. Based on our results, we revise existing peat and @entity505 loss estimates for recurrent fires in drained tropical peatlands. We suggest values for the dry mass of peat fuel consumed that are 206  t  ha(-1) for initial fires, reducing to 115  t  ha(-1) for second, 69  t  ha(-1) for third and 23  t  ha(-1) for successive fires, which are 58-7% of the current IPCC Tier 1 default value for all fires. In our study area, this results in @entity505 losses of 114, 64, 38 and 13  t  C  ha(-1) for first to fourth fires, respectively. Furthermore, we show that with increasing proximity to drainage canals both @entity4808 and the probability of recurrent fires increase and present equations explaining @entity4808 as a function of distance to drainage canal. This improved knowledge enables a more accurate approach to emissions accounting and will support IPCC Tier 2 reporting of fire emissions.

Variable XXXX losses from recurrent fires in drained tropical peatlands.

@entity505 :: ('MESH:D002244', 'Chemical') :: ['carbon'] @entity4808 :: ('MESH:D002056', 'Disease') :: ['burned area depth']
@entity505 :: (MESH:D002244,Chemical) :: ['carbon']
