Satellites spot forest stress two years before bark beetle die-offs become apparent

A faint signal emitted during photosynthesis may reveal physiological stress well before tree mortality appears in aerial surveys, potentially giving forest managers more time to prepare before mortality becomes widespread

University of Utah

FacebookX

LinkedIn

Email

 

image: 

Pixels of forested lands that were categorized as a) control (low tree mortality by wildfire and bark beetles from 2011 through 2023), b) wildfire (fire-driven mortality in 2020 and 2021) and c) bark beetle (insect-driven mortality for 2021 and 2022). 

view more 

Credit: Kunik et. al. Rem Sen Enviro (2026)

Satellite measurements detected declining photosynthetic activity in Western U.S. forests two years before bark-beetle mortality appeared in aerial detection surveys, according to new University of Utah-led research.

The first-of-its-kind study suggests that satellite-observed chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), a measure of plant photosynthesis, could provide an early warning of forest stress. As drought, wildfire and insect outbreaks occur with increasing frequency across the American West, the technology could also help scientists understand how these disturbances affect forests’ ability to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere.

“I don't know of any other tool that can detect this type of signal before tree mortality becomes obvious at a scale large enough to assess the health of entire forests,” said lead author Lewis Kunik, who recently completed his doctorate at the U. Kunik’s doctorate was jointly advised by study co-authors and U professors John Lin in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and David Bowling in the School of Biological Sciences.  

“The ultimate goal isn't to predict the exact tree that will die. Rather, the technology could identify areas of concern early enough for land managers to investigate, mobilize crews, allocate funding or otherwise prepare before mortality becomes widespread.”

The study is online ahead of its publication in the October issue of Remote Sensing of Environment.

Fluorescence provides an early warning signal

Many satellites monitor forest health using signals such as greenness and canopy structure because some when some trees become stressed, they might wilt or drop their leaves. But pines, spruces, firs and other evergreen trees present challenges for satellite monitoring: they can keep their needles even while photosynthetically dormant, such as during winter or under other high-stress conditions. This matters for Western U.S. forests, which are largely dominated by evergreens.

Fortunately, several next-generation satellites carry specialized instruments which detect a faint red glow that plants emit during photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into energy. This signal is known as solar-induced fluorescence (SIF)—when a leaf’s chlorophyll molecules absorb radiation, some radiation re-emits at longer, red wavelengths known as fluorescence. 

When plants get stressed, they absorb more light than they can use, reducing their efficiency and dimming their red glow. By tracking SIF relative to the amount of light absorbed over time, the researchers could identify subtle physiological changes in in evergreen trees that conventional satellite metrics can miss.

The authors used SIF observations from TROPOMI, the instrument on the European Sentinel-5P satellite, to compare changes in fluorescence patterns in forests affected by wildfire- and insect-caused tree mortality with non-affected control areas with similar biogeographic characteristics in forests across the American West.

In forests that would later experience bark-beetle mortality, the researchers detected a significant SIF decline roughly two years before mortality was seen in aerial surveys conducted by the USDA Forest Service. Drought stress alone couldn’t explain the signal. While nearby healthy forests experienced similar levels of drought, the decline in SIF from healthy forests was 10-20% less severe than the decline in the bark beetle-infested forests.

SIF can change for many reasons, including drought, insect infestation, canopy dieback, changes to seasonal timing of growth, reduced sunlight and changes in the mix of plants growing from the forest floor to the top of the canopy. The researchers accounted for these factors, but the complexity of forest ecosystems makes year-to-year changes in SIF difficult to interpret. 

In this case, however, their analysis revealed a clear pattern. The findings suggest that SIF signal could provide an early warning of forest stress that precedes widespread tree mortality.

The researchers validated their approach using wildfire mortality as a testbed for detecting SIF changes from a wide range of mortality severities. They saw declines in SIF that scaled proportionally with the amount of vegetation lost due to fire.

“Wildfire mortality has more predictable impacts to forest productivity than bark beetle mortality. There is also a lot more wildfire-affected land to study, and we can use established tools to estimate the severity of those events. Testing our method on wildfires really helped build confidence in our bark beetle assessment,” Kunik said.

The researchers were also able to use SIF to monitor how the ecosystem recovered from wildfire, highlighting the technology’s potential for tracking how disturbances alter forest productivity and carbon cycling over time. Because forests store massive amounts of carbon, tracking these changes will help scientists better understand how disturbances affect the carbon balance of western forests.

“SIF is an emerging tool that Earth scientists can use to show the fingerprint of plant CO2 uptake at regional or global scales,” said Kunik. “Drought, wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks can weaken a forests’ ability to absorb carbon and may release the carbon stored in the trees. Tracking these changes will help us understand whether these disturbances potentially turn forests from carbon absorbers to carbon sources.”

SIF outperformed the other satellite metrics

While other SIF-observing satellites exist, the authors used data collected by TROPOMI due to its coverage and sampling frequency.

The study tested the sensitivity of SIF measurements against several forest-health and vegetation-productivity remote-sensing measures. These included other frequently used satellite signals like land surface temperature, as well as vegetation indices like the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).

SIF showed greater sensitivity to bark beetle mortality than the other canopy remote sensing products tested. It also showed significant stress-related declines earlier than the other products, and roughly two years before aerial surveys first detected mortality. 

“The results are exciting because they show the potential of SIF to provide information on forest health over a large spatial region,” said Lin. “Future satellites, such as the European Space Agency’s FLEX mission, will provide SIF at much higher spatial resolution and add to the growing record of SIF that will reveal more patterns in the future.”

The authors are excited for SIF’s potential. The project began through conversations with USDA Forest Service collaborators who have long wanted an early warning system to help them manage forests. 

“They want to know as soon as possible when forests may cross a threshold of stress that leave it vulnerable to pests, pathogens or other drought-related impacts,” said Kunik. “We still can’t predict if, or where, mortality will occur just based on SIF observations, but our work shows that SIF could be another powerful tool for identifying areas of concern.”

******

Other co-authors of the study include Brett Raczka, University of Utah and National Center for Atmospheric Research; Jeffrey Hicke, University of Idaho; Christian Frankenberg, California Institute of Technology; Rui Cheng, Claremont McKenna College; and Michèle Slaton, Inyo National Forest, USDA Forest Service.

This research was funded by the NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems program (Award (80NSSC20K0010), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (award #2139322) Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah and by the USDA Forest Service Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center (Agreement #22-JV-11261994–036-M2).

The publication:

Kunik, Lewis et al. (2026). Characterizing effects of tree mortality from wildfire and bark beetles using satellite observations of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence. Remote Sensing of Environment, 334(October special issue), 10.1016/j.rse.2026.115550. 

Multimedia access

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAhXV6ntsZg

Visualization tracking the Earth’s carbon cycle from 2015 to 2026 using observations from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions. The animation shows the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (blue regions contain less CO2 than the baseline, red regions contain more) and photosynthetic activity of terrestrial vegetation. The left map shows atmospheric carbon dioxide; The right map shows solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) levels.

Credit: Christian Frankenberg/Caltech

---

 

A) the average insect-induced mortality from 2022-2023 USDA aerial surveys and C) 2021 late-summer mean solar induced fluorescence relative to 2019 levels, a low insect-mortality year. Redder hues represent lower levels SIF, a sign of lower photosynthetic activity. 

Credit

Adapted from Kunik et. al. Rem Sen Enviro (2026)

Journal

Remote Sensing of Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.rse.2026.115550 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Characterizing effects of tree mortality from wildfire and bark beetles using satellite observations of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2026

New study demonstrates TanSat-2's potential to distinguish human carbon emissions from ecosystem carbon sinks

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

As the world works toward a clearer picture of where carbon is emitted and absorbed, satellites are becoming increasingly important tools for tracking the global carbon cycle. China is preparing to launch its next-generation carbon monitoring satellite, TanSat-2, which is designed to provide global and regional observations of column-averaged carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).

One of the major challenges in satellite-based carbon monitoring is distinguishing CO2 released by human activities from the carbon exchanged between the atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems. Atmospheric CO2 observations contain signals from both processes, making it difficult to determine how much of the observed CO2 originates from fossil fuel emissions and how much is associated with ecosystem carbon uptake and release.

A recent collaborative study by Chinese and UK researchers published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences explores how TanSat-2 could help address this challenge.

This study introduces a newly developed carbon flux inversion approach that combines atmospheric CO2 measurements with solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), an observational proxy closely related to vegetation photosynthetic activity. By bringing these two complementary measurements together, the approach can simultaneously constrain net primary productivity (NPP) and fossil fuel combustion emissions (FF).

To further improve the separation of natural ecosystem carbon fluxes and fossil fuel emissions, the researchers applied empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis to prior NPP and FF inventories. This identifies their dominant spatial and temporal patterns while reducing the number of variables that need to be optimized in the inversion.

The researchers then put the proposed TanSat-2 observing strategy through a virtual test using Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs). Under idealized conditions in which observational biases are effectively controlled, the results show that TanSat-2 CO₂ and SIF observations could lead to an NPP error reduction of up to 95% over Siberia and the Amazon, and to error reductions of about 80% for FF emissions in regions including Siberia, northern Asia, the United States, and South Africa.

The study, however, also highlights an important challenge. Even small systematic biases in satellite-derived column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2) can substantially distort inferred CO2 sources and sinks—or even lead to their misattribution. Such biases could ultimately compromise the reliability of carbon flux estimates, underscoring the importance of carefully identifying and correcting systematic errors in satellite retrievals and subsequent data applications.

The researchers also investigated whether increasing TanSat-2’s cross-track swath width could strengthen its carbon-monitoring capability. Their results indicate that a wider observational swath can improve the robustness of CO2 flux estimates. The study further develops an error-matrix analysis framework that could help evaluate observing strategies and support the design and optimization of future carbon-monitoring satellite missions.

“Reliable monitoring of carbon fluxes at both global and regional scales cannot rely on satellites alone.” The lead author, Dr. YANG Dongxu from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences concluded their study and emphasized, “Instead, it requires the integration of satellite, ground-based, airborne, and in situ observations. Together, these complementary observing systems will be essential for building a more accurate and comprehensive picture of Earth’s carbon sources and sinks.”

---

DOI

10.1007/s00376-026-6150-1 

Article Title

A step forward to global segment CO2 flux estimation benefiting from large swath of coordinated CO2 and SIF measurement from TanSat‑2 mission

Article Publication Date

2-Sep-2026

Serbian NGOs raise concerns over construction on fire-damaged forest land

Members of Serbia's Emergency Situations Sector and international fire and rescue teams deployed in August through the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism to fight a major fire in Serbia's Deliblatska Pescara.

Facebook

TwitterLinkedInTelegramFlipboardFeedly

By Tatyana Kekic in Belgrade September 2, 2026

Two Serbian environmental and transparency groups warned on September 2 that amendments to the country's planning law could allow forest land damaged or destroyed by fire to be converted for construction, raising concerns over the fate of areas hit by this summer's wildfires.

Transparency Serbia and the Renewables and Environmental Regulatory Institute (RERI) said amendments adopted by parliament on August 31 allow forest land affected by fire to be repurposed for projects deemed to be in the public interest or for public infrastructure.

The groups said the provisions were not included in the government's original draft submitted to parliament on August 7 and were added through an amendment proposed by a parliamentary committee on August 26. They also criticised the absence of a public hearing.

Under the amended law, forest land where trees have been damaged or destroyed by fire retains the designation it had before the fire. However, an exception allows its use to be changed if required for a project for which a public interest has been established or for public infrastructure.

The organisations said the provision could facilitate the conversion of burned forest land into construction land and questioned why such changes were introduced during a period of severe wildfires.

The issue is sensitive after fires swept across Serbia in August, including more than 3,500 hectares of the Deliblato Sands Special Nature Reserve in northern Serbia. Copernicus data showed wildfires had affected about 13,920 hectares across Serbia by August 26.

The government's handling of the fires had already become a political issue. Opposition groups accused the authorities of responding too slowly and initially underestimating the scale of the fires. Some opposition figures also alleged during the fires that the government could seek to use burned land for construction, but provided no evidence for the claim.

The government rejected those allegations as unfounded. Environmental Protection Minister Sara Pavkov and Energy Minister Dubravka Đedović Handanović also denied claims that the fires could be used to meet the needs of potential investors.

Transparency Serbia and RERI said the latest amendments had increased rather than reduced concerns over the future of fire-damaged land.

They called on the construction ministry and lawmakers to explain why the provisions were introduced and to clarify the procedure that would apply if forest land were to be converted following a fire.

On the Heuristics of Fear: The Ecological Catastrophe Scenario

If the right decisions are not made in the coming years and drastic systemic changes are not implemented, the destruction of planetary habitats can no longer be stopped.


Volunteers and firefighters work to extinguish a forest fire burning in the mountains of the rural area of Epuyen, in the Patagonian region of Chubut province, Argentina, on February 1, 2026.
(Photo by Gonzalo Keogan / AFP via Getty Images)

Klaus Moegling
Sep 02, 2026

Common Dreams


The escalation of the current crisis-ridden conditions in the areas of climate change, the economy, international security, and the development of democracy—leading to dystopian future scenarios—need not occur in this form. However, there is a real possibility that they could occur if humanity fails to bring about a paradigm shift, makes the wrong decisions, and continues its destructive behavior toward the planet.
Learning from the ‘Anticipated Danger’

The construction of negative scenarios in the sense of an anticipated possibility of dystopian development can certainly serve a constructive purpose.

In his book The Imperative of Responsibility, the philosopher Hans Jonas developed what he called a “heuristics of fear,” by which he meant that potential undesirable developments should be recognized in all their severity and menace and described in drastic terms commensurate with their presumed magnitude. According to Jonas (1979/2015, 7), this enables a society to look the potential risks squarely in the eye and thereby resolve to acknowledge its own responsibility for the planet and the fate of future generations:
What can serve as a compass? The anticipated danger itself! In its flash of lightning from the future, in the foreshadowing of its planetary scope and its human depth, the ethical principles from which the new duties of new power can be derived first become apparent.

Of course, this negative vision must be compatible with the developments already analyzed; it must not, therefore, be plucked out of thin air, even if not all the information needed for an assessment is yet available. Heuristics is a creative thought process based on estimates, assumptions, and calculations.

Immersing oneself in a likely future situation and sensing the potential of a future catastrophe can provide insights for preventive action. It is possible that the fear of a catastrophic planetary scenario could lead to a systemic shift in course and to responsible decisions.

The Inadequacy of the Paris Climate Agreements

From the spectrum of multiple crises—which are certainly interconnected—this article will focus on the disrupted relationship between humanity and nature and heuristically develop it into a negative scenario.

David Spratt and Ian Dunlop (2019, 6) predict that even if the 2015 Paris Climate Agreements were fully implemented, stable climate conditions would still not be expected. In particular, climatic feedback effects would render the Earth largely uninhabitable for human civilization by the end of the century. Even if the Paris climate targets were met, a warming of 5°C would be expected by the year 2100, with devastating consequences for life on Earth.

It must also be taken into account that not all countries have accepted the Paris Agreements or, in some cases—such as the U.S. under Trump—have since withdrawn from them.

Fires, Storms, Overheating, and Floods

A worst-case scenario for such an increasingly hot biosphere must anticipate a rise in wildfires. Vast areas of the Earth will begin to burn. Fire walls driven by massive gusts of wind will devour everything in their path: trees and bushes, houses, animals, and people. Such firestorms are beyond human control and cannot be fought; they depend on heavy rainfall, and it is unclear whether such rain will fall in the burning regions at all due to climate shifts. The result will be the desolation of entire regions, leading to humanitarian, ecological, and financial problems on a global scale. The fires of 2025 and 2026 are already offering a glimpse of what lies ahead for humanity.

Future average temperatures in the Persian Gulf are projected to reach 50-60°C, meaning that for the average person, human life here will no longer be possible—or will only be possible in artificially cooled spaces. Even in the countries of the Global North, mass mortality is beginning due to overheated living environments. Initially, this will affect older people and those who are already ill, and will then spread to people who would otherwise be considered healthy. Circulatory shock, overheating, and dehydration will then also affect younger people.

It is undisputed that sea levels will rise due to the melting of the poles, the warming of seawater, and the accompanying melting of Arctic ice.

However, a potential average rise of 2.5 meters by 2100 does not represent the extreme level of sea-level rise. During storm surges in particular, the rise in sea level can be several times this value and lead to flooding deep into continental areas. This will also affect the Global North.

Islands, coastal regions, and low-lying inland areas will be flooded, destroying living conditions there and, in turn, triggering migration. Not only will island groups disappear, but large parts of countries such as Bangladesh and India will also be flooded, triggering mass exoduses. In this context, the rise in sea level, combined with the monsoon rains in this region—which are already becoming increasingly devastating—will have a particularly dangerous effect.

The thawing of Arctic and Siberian permafrost, through the associated release of carbon dioxide and methane, will lead to a massive increase in global warming and abruptly intensify all related processes.

In other parts of the world, climate shifts are causing air masses with extremely different temperatures to collide, resulting in devastating storms such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Houses, cars, animals, and people are swept up into the air and smashed to pieces. Skyscrapers collapse, and the infrastructure—including electricity, water, and gas lines, as well as the internet—is irreparably destroyed. Radioactivity is released from destroyed nuclear power plants; it circulates in the Earth’s atmosphere, falls as rain, and will lead to increased rates of cancer and birth defects in humans and animals.

Catastrophic Impact on Social and Political Development on a Global Scale

Massive migration—in the form of mass exoduses or mass migrations—will be triggered by climate change. Migration to date should be viewed, at best, as the tip of the iceberg in this context, as billions of people will set out as refugees if global warming continues unchecked. It is not difficult to imagine the conflicts—including military confrontations—that will arise from these upheavals in the struggle for ecologically intact regions.

Global warming will lead to massive crop failures and associated famines. The global agricultural food system will collapse. The struggle for food and survival will lead to massive price increases, looting, and military conflicts. The call for a heavy hand, for authoritarian leaders, and for police-state methods will grow louder even in democracies.

Far-right governments will attempt, in the interests of their constituencies, to deny climate change and continue to rely on the exploitation of fossil fuels.

The struggle for drinking water will intensify, on the one hand due to increasing periods of drought and, on the other, due to the growing trend toward profit-driven privatization of water sources. Privatized water sources will be guarded by militarized security forces against raids by groups of thirsty people. In drought-stricken areas, people will die of thirst—especially those who no longer have the financial means to purchase water, a scarce and therefore increasingly expensive commodity.

Spratt and Dunlop (2019, 9) describe the societal consequences of climate change even at the 3°C level. States and societies will be overwhelmed and will face extreme collective stress:
The flooding of coastal communities around the world—particularly in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China—has the potential to call regional and even national identities into question. Armed conflicts between nations over resources such as the Nile and its tributaries are likely, and a nuclear war is possible. The societal consequences range from heightened religious zeal to utter chaos. In this scenario, climate change triggers a lasting change in humanity’s relationship with nature.

Furthermore, if a UN in need of strengthening fails to dissuade unscrupulous governments from the generationally selfish destruction of the rainforest for the purposes of livestock ranching, soybean cultivation, the search for mineral resources, or land speculation, then this, too, will not only destroy the Earth’s lungs but also bring about a drastic climate shift.

Wars raging globally and emissions from explosions and fires exacerbate climate change while simultaneously preventing the affected regions from taking effective measures against this climatic dystopia. The military in active service is becoming the largest institutional global destroyer of the climate.

These are just a few of the developments addressed so far. Threats such as temperature changes and the resulting diversion of the Gulf Stream, the narrowing of the temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator—which leads to a weakening of the jet stream—the release of methane trapped in the seabed, insect die-offs due to the increased use of pesticides in agriculture, the destruction of clean drinking water due to overfertilization of fields, as well as plastic pollution in the oceans and the demise of all life in increasingly larger marine regions are likely to represent additional ecological tipping points that will further exacerbate the massive problems already mentioned.

When Will the “Point of No Return” Be Reached?

The question is when the global situation will reach a point from which there will be no return to ecological balance for many generations to come.

The progression of overpopulation, coupled with unchecked economic growth and rampant consumerism, leads to increased ecological exploitation of the Earth system under the conditions of an increasingly overcrowded planet.

However, it is to be expected that population pressure is not primarily responsible for environmental destruction, but rather, in particular, the irresponsible consumption of resources by the wealthier segment of the world’s population (Roettig 2021).

The “point of no return” is likely to be crossed soon. Once the biosphere’s planetary responses develop an uncontrollable momentum of their own that turns against human civilization and the conditions necessary for all life on Earth, it will be too late—both for prevention and for mitigation.

Over the past 20 years, the planet’s resilience has reached its breaking point; in some areas, it has demonstrably been exceeded.

The Doomsday Clock makes this clear. According to the Doomsday Clock—founded and calculated in 1947 by Albert Einstein, among others—we are already 85 seconds away from the destruction of the planet’s foundations as of February 2026. In 1991, we were still 17 minutes away from destruction.

Eco-Imperialist and Systemic Causes

Violent competition over the use of resources is intensifying as more people’s basic needs—and, in particular, their luxury needs—must be met. Not only the struggle for clean drinking water and food, but also the struggle for lithium, cobalt, uranium, etc., is leading to violent conflicts between different groups of people and regions. German political scientist Hans-Jürgen Burchardt criticizes the fact that the rich industrialized nations are the main contributors to climate change, yet the Global South bears the brunt of its consequences.
Thus, following the phase-out of nuclear power, Germany’s energy transition is also made possible by cheap coal imports from Colombia. There, mining takes place in highly environmentally damaging open-pit mines; entire communities are forcibly displaced for this purpose, and human rights violations are commonplace. Even the much-lauded green economy, which relies on electric mobility, would not be possible without the lithium reserves in the Andes. Locally, however, lithium mining robs residents of their livelihoods.

The war in Ukraine, too, must be viewed not only from a geostrategic perspective but also through an eco-imperialist lens, in which Russia and the US are attempting to divide up Ukraine’s natural resource deposits among themselves.

Conclusion: The Need for a Positive Vision of Social Development

The outline presented here of a dystopia of planetary development—based on a negative ecological scenario—should have made it very clear: If the right decisions are not made in the coming years and drastic systemic changes are not implemented, the destruction of planetary habitats can no longer be stopped. If, in addition to a biosphere in decline, further stressors arise—such as potentially runaway generative AI, authoritarian and aggressively acting nation-states at war with one another, and the threat of a nuclear inferno—this will likely spell the end of humanity. No more and no less.

The ecological dystopia outlined here does not have to come to pass. Everything depends on how responsibly and competently the current generation—which is currently active in the global centers of power—will act, and on the corrective influence that civil society resistance can exert in this regard.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Klaus Moegling
Prof. Dr. Klaus Moegling is a political scientist, sociologist, and author of the book "Realignment. A peaceful and sustainably developed world is (still) possible." Which you can read here: https://www.klaus-moegling.de/international-edition/

 

Wildfires cause 165,000 respiratory cases in Indonesia's Kalimantan

/ Michael Held - UnsplashFacebook

TwitterLinkedInTelegramFlipboardFeedly

By IntelliNews - Jakarta Bureau September 1, 2026

Acute respiratory infections in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, reached 165,727 cases between January 1 and August 22, the local health office reported on August 29. Infection levels reached roughly 29 out of every 1,000 residents across the Indonesian province as land and forest fires expanded, according to Detik.com.

Seasonal agricultural burning in Indonesia routinely triggers transboundary smoke haze across Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines and Malaysia. The recurring crisis threatens regional healthcare networks, worsens air quality in neighboring nations, and damages local economic productivity.

Infection tallies began rising in late May before accelerating rapidly into mid-August, West Kalimantan Health Office head Dr Erna Yulianti said. The sharpest increase coincided with a surge in satellite hotspot detections across the Indonesian territory.

Local health centres across the province reported a heavy influx of patients seeking treatment for breathing difficulties. Pontianak City logged nine health alerts during the second week of August, whilst Ketapang Regency registered six and Sintang Regency reported five.

Respiratory illnesses stem from multiple environmental factors and cannot be linked solely to fire emissions, Yulianti noted. However, fine particulate matter from land burning across Indonesia significantly aggravates pre-existing lung conditions. Public health officials are cross-referencing patient records with satellite data to direct medical resources toward high-risk fire zones.

Indonesian authorities warned residents to wear face masks outdoors, avoid unnecessary open-air activities, and maintain hydration. Warnings specifically target vulnerable groups, including children, pregnant women, the elderly, and individuals with chronic illness.

Indonesians brave choking smoke to pray for rain as country battles wildfires

PALEMBANG, Indonesia (AP) — The prayer gathering in one of the regions hardest hit by this year’s wildfire season comes as the province faces prolonged dry weather that has heightened the risk of forest and peatland fires.

 Authorities in Indonesia’s South Sumatra province turned to spiritual measures on Tuesday as huge blazes in central and western regions scorched wide areas of forests and peatland, creating a choking haze that blanketed some cities in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.

The prayer gathering in one of the regions hardest hit by this year’s wildfire season comes as the province faces prolonged dry weather that has heightened the risk of forest and peatland fires.

The latest satellite data from the Environment Ministry showed West Kalimantan recorded the highest number of hot spots with 3,120, followed by Central Kalimantan on 2,314 and South Sumatra at 1,500. Forestry Ministry data showed that nearly 940 square kilometers (363 square miles) were burned in July alone, including over 20 square kilometers (8 square miles) in South Sumatra province.

About 3,000 residents gathered in Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra province, to take part in a special Islamic prayer for rain, known as “salat istisqa.” They prayed shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard of the governor’s office as thick smoke shrouded roads, buildings and public facilities, reducing visibility and forcing motorists to drive with their headlights on during the day.

“We have done everything we can and worked closely with all relevant parties,” Gov. Herman Deru said before the prayer. “As people of faith, we are also praying to God to send rain so that life can return to normal.”

He also said the public prayer would complement ongoing firefighting and drought-mitigation measures and serve as a moment for residents to unite in confronting the environmental challenges facing the province.

Emergency services have been battling wildfires driven by an intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season, generating dense smoke that crossed into Malaysia and Brunei, according to the National Disaster Management Agency.

Indonesia is intensifying weather-modification operations to help more than 24,000 firefighters, who were deployed on Sumatra and Borneo islands to combat wildfires, by inducing rainfall through the dispersal of salt particles into suitable clouds, with 30 aircraft for cloud-seeding and water-bombing operations over Kalimantan, and another 22 helicopters covering Sumatra.

As fires continued to spread, the Forestry Ministry announced Tuesday it had sanctioned six forestry concession holders after finding that more than 15 square kilometers (5.8 square miles) of forest and land had burned within areas under their management in West, Central and East Kalimantan provinces on Borneo island.

Five companies were ordered to strengthen fire-control measures and rehabilitate burned land, while a sixth company had its permit suspended because fires on its concession were widespread and recurrent.

Forestry law enforcement director general Dwi Januanto Nugroho said the authorities could pursue criminal charges if investigations uncover evidence that companies or individuals deliberately caused fires or failed to meet their obligations to prevent them.

Indonesian police have arrested 72 people suspected of starting some of the forest and peatland fires.

Plantation owners and traditional farmers often start fires to clear land for farming at low cost, triggering hazardous haze that reduces visibility, disrupts land and air transportation and threatens public health.

Fires are a regular problem during the dry season in Indonesia, the vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and the haze they generate has periodically drawn diplomatic complaints from neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

___

Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.