Surveyed villages in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo with land cover (2010) classes.

<p>The map shows the land cover and land use across Borneo island in the year 2010 (see Figure legend, and methods for sources), and the locations where the children's drawing surveys were conducted in twenty-two villages (blue dots) in three different parts of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Insets: (A) Ten villages at the lower Kapuas in West Kalimantan Province; (B) Ten villages at the upper Kapuas in West Kalimantan Province; (C) Two villages at the upper Kapuas in East Kalimantan Province.</p

Categorical principal component of the current land cover, and art variables of the ‘present’ environment.

<p>The figure shows the relationships among the current land cover (black short line) of the villages (black dots) and the art variables from drawings (green triangles; see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0103005#pone-0103005-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a> for their names and codes) describing the children's perceptions of current environmental conditions. The two first components explain 85.2% of the variability of the data (respectively, component 1: 64.6% and component 2: 20.6%) and separate three village groups (Group 1: high values along axis 1, consisting of villages 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 12, 18, 19 and 20; Group 2: low values on axis2, consisting of villages 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9; Group 3: relatively low values on axis 1, consisting of villages 1, 2, 21, 22 and 10). The art variables ‘temperature, forest mountain, and river conditions’ have no variance in the present-day context across villages (perceived in ‘good condition’), and were thus not included in the PCA.</p

Through the Eyes of Children: Perceptions of Environmental Change in Tropical Forests

<div><p>This study seeks to understand children's perceptions of their present and future environments in the highly biodiverse and rapidly changing landscapes of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. We analyzed drawings by children (target age 10–15 years) from 22 villages, which show how children perceive the present conditions of forests and wildlife surrounding their villages and how they expect conditions to change over the next 15 years. Analyses of picture elements and their relationships to current landscape variables indicate that children have a sophisticated understanding of their environment and how different environmental factors interact, either positively or negatively. Children appear to have landscape-dependent environmental perceptions, showing awareness of past environmental conditions and many aspects of recent trends, and translating these into predictions for future environmental conditions. The further removed their present landscape is from the originally forested one, the more environmental change they expect in the future, particularly declines in forest cover, rivers, animal diversity and increases in temperature and natural disasters. This suggests that loss of past perceptions and associated “shifting environmental baselines” do not feature strongly among children on Borneo, at least not for the perceptions we investigated here. Our findings that children have negative expectations of their future environmental conditions have important political implications. More than other generations, children have a stake in ensuring that future environmental conditions support their long-term well-being. Understanding what drives environmental views among children, and how they consider trade-offs between economic development and social and environmental change, should inform optimal policies on land use. Our study illuminates part of the complex interplay between perceptions of land cover and land use change. Capturing the views of children through artistic expressions provides a potentially powerful tool to influence public and political opinions, as well as a valuable approach for developing localized education and nature conservation programs.</p></div

Environmental art variables depicted in drawings by children from 22 villages in Kalimantan.

<p>Environmental art variables depicted in drawings by children from 22 villages in Kalimantan.</p

Correlations between current land cover surrounding the village, and art variables representing children's drawings of their future environment.

<p>For descriptions of land cover variables and of art variables, see respectively <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0103005#pone.0103005.s001" target="_blank">Table S1</a> and <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0103005#pone-0103005-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>. The art variable ‘People clearing the forest’ has no variance for the future, with the highest number of men clearing the forest for each village, its correlation with the land cover is thus not calculated. Correlation coefficients shown in bold font are statistically significant (with *p<0.05 and **p<0.005).</p

Ages and numbers of children who participated in drawing surveys in 22 villages in Kalimantan.

<p>*Note: In four of the villages, 39 children participated in both the present and the forest future drawing sessions, however, if a child had already drawn, then he or she only participated in giving ideas for the second drawing. Consequently, a total of 247 children participated in the drawing study with 131 girls and 116 boys from 22 different villages.</p><p>Within each village, the average age of children in the ‘present’ and ‘future’ drawing groups were as similar as possible.</p

Categorical principal component of 15 art variables from ‘present’ and ‘future’ drawings.

<p>The figure shows the relationships between the art variables (green triangles; see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0103005#pone-0103005-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a> for their names and codes) and the villages from different landscapes (see Fig. 4) describing the children's perceptions of environmental change between the present (grey circles) and the future (black dots). The two first components explain 96.2% of the variability of the data (respectively, component 1: 93.7% and component 2: 2.5%).</p

Relative frequency of wild animal taxa (%) between the present and future drawings.

<p>Frequency of presence of animal wildlife in drawings by children from 22 villages in Indonesian Borneo. Frequency of presence for each animal taxon is shown for present-day drawings (grey bars), and the future drawings (black bars).</p

Drawings of the present and future by children in lower Kapuas, West Kalimantan.

<p>Both the drawings represent respectively the present (A) and future conditions (B) of the forest and animal wildlife. The children provided explanations in the drawing as the following: A) Present conditions: “The forest is an oxygen giver which is used to make a living from forest trees: rattan, rubber trees, durian, bamboo, etc. Forest is home to wild animals (e.g. snakes, wild cats, monkeys, pigs, birds, deer, squirrels, etc.) and among those there are several which live in the river (e.g. crocodile, fish and turtles). Nevertheless, wild animals are being hunted by humans and are thus disappearing (e.g. snakes, monkeys, deer, pigs, pangolins, birds, etc.). Animals that live around the village are chickens, pigs, dogs, and cats. The forest is still good, especially in the mountains.” B) Future conditions: “Forest is currently home to many different animals and to human livelihoods. In the future, the air that was fresh in the present time is getting warmer, including the mountainous regions. Nothing is green anymore and generally forest is replaced by oil palm even in the mountain where it only remains as few small trees. The number of trees decreases due to palm oil companies, factories, and other human activities such as illegal logging to build houses, mining for materials, and others for building highways. These changes will cause natural disasters such as erosion, landslides, and floods. The number of animals decreases, and little by little they will disappear, except dogs and chickens. The rivers (with water boats) are being polluted by scattered waste, and fish will be less abundant and will then go extinct.”</p

Atmospheric CH₄ and CO₂ enhancements and biomass burning emission ratios derived from satellite observations of the 2015 Indonesian fire plumes

The 2015–2016 strong El Niño event has had a dramatic impact on the amount of Indonesian biomass burning, with the El Niño-driven drought further desiccating the already-drier-than-normal landscapes that are the result of decades of peatland draining, widespread deforestation, anthropogenically driven forest degradation and previous large fire events. It is expected that the 2015–2016 Indonesian fires will have emitted globally significant quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere, as did previous El Niño-driven fires in the region. The form which the carbon released from the combustion of the vegetation and peat soils takes has a strong bearing on its atmospheric chemistry and climatological impacts. Typically, burning in tropical forests and especially in peatlands is expected to involve a much higher proportion of smouldering combustion than the more flaming-characterised fires that occur in fine-fuel-dominated environments such as grasslands, consequently producing significantly more CH₄ (and CO) per unit of fuel burned. However, currently there have been no aircraft campaigns sampling Indonesian fire plumes, and very few ground-based field campaigns (none during El Niño), so our understanding of the large-scale chemical composition of these extremely significant fire plumes is surprisingly poor compared to, for example, those of southern Africa or the Amazon. Here, for the first time, we use satellite observations of CH₄ and CO₂ from the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT) made in large-scale plumes from the 2015 El Niño-driven Indonesian fires to probe aspects of their chemical composition. We demonstrate significant modifications in the concentration of these species in the regional atmosphere around Indonesia, due to the fire emissions. Using CO and fire radiative power (FRP) data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Service, we identify fire-affected GOSAT soundings and show that peaks in fire activity are followed by subsequent large increases in regional greenhouse gas concentrations. CH₄ is particularly enhanced, due to the dominance of smouldering combustion in peatland fires, with CH₄ total column values typically exceeding 35 ppb above those of background “clean air” soundings. By examining the CH₄ and CO₂ excess concentrations in the fire-affected GOSAT observations, we determine the CH₄ to CO₂ (CH₄ ∕ CO₂) fire emission ratio for the entire 2-month period of the most extreme burning (September–October 2015), and also for individual shorter periods where the fire activity temporarily peaks. We demonstrate that the overall CH₄ to CO₂ emission ratio (ER) for fires occurring in Indonesia over this time is 6.2 ppb ppm⁻¹. This is higher than that found over both the Amazon (5.1 ppb ppm⁻¹) and southern Africa (4.4 ppb ppm⁻¹), consistent with the Indonesian fires being characterised by an increased amount of smouldering combustion due to the large amount of organic soil (peat) burning involved. We find the range of our satellite-derived Indonesian ERs (6.18–13.6 ppb ppm⁻¹) to be relatively closely matched to that of a series of close-to-source, ground-based sampling measurements made on Kalimantan at the height of the fire event (7.53–19.67 ppb ppm⁻¹), although typically the satellite-derived quantities are slightly lower on average. This seems likely because our field sampling mostly intersected smaller-scale peat-burning plumes, whereas the large-scale plumes intersected by the GOSAT Thermal And Near infrared Sensor for carbon Observation – Fourier Transform Spectrometer (TANSO-FTS) footprints would very likely come from burning that was occurring in a mixture of fuels that included peat, tropical forest and already-cleared areas of forest characterised by more fire-prone vegetation types than the natural rainforest biome (e.g. post-fire areas of ferns and scrubland, along with agricultural vegetation). The ability to determine large-scale ERs from satellite data allows the combustion behaviour of very large regions of burning to be characterised and understood in a way not possible with ground-based studies, and which can be logistically difficult and very costly to consider using aircraft observations. We therefore believe the method demonstrated here provides a further important tool for characterising biomass burning emissions, and that the GHG ERs derived for the first time for these large-scale Indonesian fire plumes during an El Niño event point to more routinely assessing spatiotemporal variations in biomass burning ERs using future satellite missions. These will have more complete spatial sampling than GOSAT and will enable the contributions of these fires to the regional atmospheric chemistry and climate to be better understood