Smoke in the background provides evident that thin layers of the organic matter compacted beneath senior scientist Mark Cochrane’s feet are on fire. These peat fires can only be extinguished when the land floods.
Senior scientist Mark Cochrane of the Geospatial Sciences Center for Excellence wades through drainage ditches carved in the Kalimantan peat swamp forest in Borneo as part of an ill-fated effort to convert 2.5 million acres of the forest into rice paddies.