Smoke Blankets Indonesia

Fires in Indonesia are not like most other fires. They are extremely difficult to extinguish. The root cause is large deposits of peat—a soil-like mixture of partly decayed plant material formed in wetlands—lining the coasts of Borneo and Sumatra. “Most burning starts on idle, already-cleared peatlands and escapes underground into an endless source of fuel,” explained David Gaveau of the Center for International Forestry Research.