The Ministry Of Environment And Forestry Has Prepared An Early Warning System For Disasters Due To La Nina

Photo by Arthur Goldstein on Unsplash

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Environment and Forestry has prepared an early warning system to deal with potential hydrometeorological disasters due to the La Nina phenomenon in Indonesia, which is expected to occur until early next year.

Deputy Minister of Environment and Forestry (LHK) Alue Dohong said his ministry is preparing an early warning system for landslides in the upstream river and mapping the level of runoff vulnerability in order to reduce hydrometeorological disaster risk and prepare for post-La Nina forest fires.

"There are several rain station instruments and landslide early warning systems, especially those placed in the upstream part of the river by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK)," said Alue during the La Nina Anticipation Coordination Meeting held by the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), Friday, October 29.

He said again, the KLHK has five units of automatic weather stations located upstream along with 12 units of river flow monitoring stations and 34 units of landslide early warning systems. He ensured that the infrastructure would continue to be developed so that the KLHK could have representative data, especially for mapping sample data.

This is because the map of the level of runoff vulnerability is very important to take steps to mitigate the potential for floods due to excess runoff. Especially related to the influence of land characteristics that affect runoff, identifying catchment areas, and the existence of maps showing the spatial distribution of areas that have a level of vulnerability.

"So the upstream areas and so on have been identified so that in the future we can increase their absorption in order to reduce runoff supply from rainfall," Alue explained, quoted by Antara.

"This runoff vulnerability map is an important instrument going forward in our context to prevent flash floods and so on," added Alue.

In addition to preventing flash floods, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry is also preparing for forest and land fires after La Nina is over. This is because certain areas after La Nina experienced drought which became one of the factors for forest and land fires, based on observations from La Nina that occurred last year.

BMKG predicts the weak to neutral La Nina phenomenon will last until May 2022 which can increase rainfall in almost all parts of Indonesia, with several BMKG observation points showing an increase of over 70 percent.