Marsh Fires? What and How!

So what exactly makes a marsh fire hard to contain? Well, one of the most obvious answer is methane. Marshes, swamps, wet jungles, and even wet ricefields (as often found in south east asian countries) generate methane naturally due to organic material decompositions happen under the watery areas. This easily flammable material is released all the time and make those areas mentioned above, although wet, can caught fire immediately, especially in dry season.

Those areas also tend to deposit organic materials layer by layer. Each layer can decompose separately and can produce methane that is stored between layers. It can be imagined easily that organic materials beds that are found on marshes can act as methane storage and makes them flammable too if there is any fire that penetrates layers.

And more often than not, fire penetrates layers and burn the deposited methanes.

Now, what makes the fire ignited in the first place?

As this writer have said before, fire outbreaks can be man made by traditional farmers and plantation workers who intend to clear lands. They are also can be caused by severe drought that caused plant materials to go so dry that when they rub on each other they create frictions that are sufficients to generate sparks and burn the materials. Another surprising finding is the fact that the fire can be caused by dew deposited in the morning. The dew deposits can act as lup/magnifying glass because of their round shapes. They can focus morning sunray into several spots on dry or wet plant materials, and can ignite them. In an easily ignited environmet like marshes, this phenomenon can succesfully trigger fire outbreaks on randomly spread spots on wide area.

Once a fire is triggered in marshes, they can burn methane molecules hovering on the area in rapid rate. This methane burning can spread wildly and widely, even so in open marshes where trees are sparse and bushes and grasses dominate (like in severy deforested Kurau area of Padang Island). Fire can also dry up organic material layers and crack them up, releasing methane deposits in them and burn through inside the layers. This "internal combustion" add to the widespread of fire because fire can be "dig tunnel" from a spot to another spot and widen the hotspot areas. This also causes tire to look like they seems to re-ignite even on wet areas where a fire has been put out recently.

All of those phenomena mentioned above have been causing severe and widespread fire outbreak on severely deforested marshes areas of Sumatra and the smaller island around it. Those are the causes that millions of people in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore suffering from breathing problems.