$1m for devising best way to map Indonesia’s peatlands

Want to make a million dollars? Find the most efficient way to map Indonesia’s peatlands.

That’s the ticket to winning the Indonesian Peat Prize, announced by the cartographically challenged Southeast Asian country last month.

The competition will establish a national standard for mapping peatland extent and thickness, a process deemed essential to stopping the annual forest and peat fires which grow more devastating by the year. Last dry season, they burned an area the size of Rwanda, afflicted half a million people with respiratory problems, pumped an enormous amount of carbon into the atmosphere and cost Indonesia $16 billion, according to government and World Bank figures.

source: http://news.mongabay.com/2016/03/1m-for-devising-best-way-to-map-indonesias-peatlands/