Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:40:47.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Drought frequency changes in Sabah and adjacent parts of northern Borneo since the late nineteenth century and possible implications for tropical rain forest dynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

Rory P. D. Walsh
Rory P. D. Walsh
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, University of Wales Swansea, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, Wales, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Archival rainfall data are used to investigate changes in drought frequency and severity in Sabah and other parts of northern Borneo since the late nineteenth century. Two measures of drought severity are used: drought duration (given by the number of consecutive months with less than 100 mm rain); and drought intensity (indexed by the cumulative rainfall deficit below 100 mm per month of a drought sequence). Within northern Borneo dry periods are very short (>3 months) and infrequent in Sarawak, south-western Sabah, Brunei and central and western Kalimantan; droughts occur seasonally, but are comparatively short in north-western Sabah; droughts are less frequent) but more severe in eastern Sabah and parts of eastern Kalimantan. In coastal Sabah and Brunei, there has been a statistically significant increase in the frequency and severity of droughts since the late 1960s. At Sandakan, two drought-prone epochs in 1877–1915 and 1968–92 (each experiencing five droughts of at least 4 months duration) are identified, separated by a 52-year period that was nearly drought-free. At Sandakan also, the ecologically damaging 1982–3 drought was neither as long or severe as those of 1903 and 1915. Links with El Niño-Southern Oscillation events are found to be not as strong as previous studies have suggested. Possible implications of the spatial and temporal patterns in drought magnitude-frequency for differences in tropical rain forest character within the region are discussed.

Keywords

Droughtfiretropical rain forestBorneoclimatic changeextreme events
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , May 1996 , pp. 385 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

LITERATURE CITED

Allen, B., Brookfield, H. & Byron, Y. 1989. Frost and drought through time and space. Part II: the written, oral and proxy records and their meaning. Mountain Research and Development 9:279–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beaman, R. S., Beaman, J. H., Marsh, C. & Woods, P. 1985. Drought and forest fires in Sabah in 1983. Sabah Society Journal 8:10–30.Google Scholar
Beard, J. S. 1946. The natural vegetation of Trinidad. Oxford Forestry Memoir 20.Google Scholar
Beard, J. S. 1949. The natural vegetation of the Windward and Leeward Islands. Oxford Forestry Memoir 21.Google Scholar
Becker, P. 1992. Seasonality of rainfall and drought in Brunei Darussalam. Brunei Museum Journal 7 (4):99–109.Google Scholar
Becker, P. & Tengah, A. K. 1990. Changing rainfall patterns in Brunei Darussalam. Brunei Museum Journal 7 (2):72–78.Google Scholar
Becker, P., Booth, W. E., Mirasan, M. & Abu Bakar, I. H. 1991. Water relations and exchange of some forest herbs in Brunei Darussalam. Brunei Museum Journal 7 (3):79–85.Google Scholar
Berlage, H. P. 1931. Over het verband tuschen de dikte der jaaringen van djatiboomen (Tectona grandis L. f.) en den regenval op Java. Tectona 24:939–953.Google Scholar
Bock, C. 1881. The Head-Hunters of Borneo: a narrative of travel up the Mahakam and down the Barito; also, journeyings in Sumatra. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London. Reprinted in 1985 by Oxford University Press, Singapore.Google Scholar
Boomgaard, P. & Van Zanden, J. L. 1990. Food crops and arable lands, Java 1815–1942. Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Brooks, C. P. 1921. The meteorology of British North Borneo. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 47:294–297.Google Scholar
Brown, N. D. & Whitmore, T. C. (1992). Do dipterocarp seedlings really partition tropical rain forest gaps? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 335:369–378.Google Scholar
Bruijnzeel, L. 1989. Nutrient cycling in moist tropical forests: the hydrological framework. Pp. 383–415 in Proctor, J., (ed.). Mineral nutrients in tropical forest and savanna ecosystems. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
Brünig, E. F. 1969. On the seasonality of droughts in the lowlands of Sarawak (Borneo). Erdkunde 2:127–133.Google Scholar
Brünig, E. F. 1970. Stand structure, physiognomy and environmental factors in Sarawak. Tropical Ecology 11:26–43.Google Scholar
Brünig, E. F. 1971. On the ecological significance of drought in the equatorial wet evergreen forest of Sarawak. Pp. 66–96 in Flenley J. R. (ed. ). The water relations of Malesian forests. University of Hull, Department of Geography Miscellaneous Series 11.Google Scholar
Burbidge, F. W. 1880. The Gardens of the Sun. A Naturalist's Journal of Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago. John Murray, London. Reprinted in 1991 by Oxford University Press, Singapore.Google Scholar
Campbell, E. J. F. & Newbery, D. McC. 1993. Ecological relationships between lianas and trees in lowland rain forest in Sabah, East Malaysia. Journal of Tropical Ecology 9:469–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chadwick-Healey Ltd 1992. World Climate Disc: Global Climatic Change Data. (Disc, User Manual and Data Reference Guide.) Chadwyck-Healey Ltd, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Clayton, H. H. 1927. World weather records. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 79.Google Scholar
Clayton, H. H. 1944. World weather records. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 90.Google Scholar
Clayton, H. H. & Clayton, F. L. 1947. World weather records. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 105.Google Scholar
Cockburn, P. F. 1974. The origin of the Sook Plain. Malayan Forester 37:61–63.Google Scholar
Diaz, H. F. & Kiladis, G. N. 1992. Atmospheric teleconnections associated with the extreme phase of the Southern Oscillation. Pp. 7–28 in Diaz, H. F. & Markgraf, V. (eds). El Niño: historical and paleoclimatic aspects of the Southern Oscillation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Diaz, H. F. & Markgraf, V. (eds), 1992. El Niño: historical and paleoclimatic aspects of the Southern Oscillation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Diaz, H. F. & Pulwarty, R. S. 1992. A comparison of Southern Oscillation and El Niño signals in the tropics. Pp. 175–192 in Diaz, H. F. & Markgraf, V. (eds). El Niño: historical and paleoclimatic aspects of the Southern Oscillation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Enfield, D. B. 1992. Historical and prehistorical overview of El Niño/Southern Oscillation. Pp. 95–117 in Diaz, H. F. & Markgraf, V. (eds). El Niño: historical and paleoclimatic aspects of the Southern Oscillation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Goldammer, J. G. & Seibert, B. 1989. Natural rain forest fires in Eastern Borneo during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Naturwissenschaften 76:518–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldammer, J. G. & Seibert, B. 1990. The impact of droughts and forest fires on tropical rain forest of East Kalimantan. Pp. 11–31 in Goldammer, J. G. (ed.). Fire in the Tropical Biota. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldammer, J. G. 1993. Historical biogeography of fire: tropical and subtropical. Pp. 297–314 in Crutzen, P. J. & Goldammer, J. G. (eds). Fire in the environment: the ecological, atmospheric and climatic importance of vegetation fires. Wiley, Chichester.Google Scholar
Grabowsky, F. 1890. Streifzüge durch die malayischen Distrikte Südost-Borneos, II. Globus 57:219–22.Google Scholar
Henley, D. 1994. Climatic variation in Indonesian history: a short review of recent research. Indonesian Environmental History Newsletter 3:1–4.Google Scholar
Jordan, C. F. & Kline, J. R. 1977. Transpiration of trees in a tropical rainforest. Journal of Applied Ecology 14:853–860.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leighton, M. 1984. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation event in Southeast Asia: effects of drought and fire in tropical forest in eastern Borneo. Unpublished report to the World Wildlife Fund, 31 pp.Google Scholar
Leighton, M. & Wirawan, N. 1986. Catastrophic drought and fire in Borneo tropical rain forest associated with the 1982–83 El Niño Southern Oscillation event. Pp. 75–102 in Prance, G. T. (ed). Tropical rain forests and the world atmosphere. Westview, Boulder.Google Scholar
Lockwood, J. G. 1974. World climatology: an environmental approach. Arnold, London.Google Scholar
Mohr, E. C. J. & Van Baren, F. A. 1954. Tropical soils. Interscience, London.Google Scholar
Murphy, J. O. & Whetton, P. H. 1989. A re-analysis of a tree-ring chronology from Java. Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen (Series B) 29:241–257.Google Scholar
Newbery, D. McC, Campbell, E. J. F., Lee, Y. F., Ridsdale, C. E. & Still, M. J. 1992. Primary lowland dipterocarp forest at Danum Valley, Sabah, Malaysia: structure, relative abundance and family composition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 335:341–356.Google Scholar
Nicholls, N. 1993. ENSO, drought and flooding rain in South-East Asia. Pp. 154–175 in Brookfield, H. and Byron, Y. (eds). South-East Asia's environmental future: the search for sustainability. United Nations University Press, Tokyo/Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Quinn, W. H. 1992. A study of Southern Oscillation-related climatic activity for a.d. 622–1990 incorporating Nile River flood data. Pp. 119–149 in Diaz, H. F. & Markgraf, V. (eds). El Niño: historical and paleoclimatic aspects of the Southern Oscillation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ramage, C. S. 1971. Monsoon meteorology. Academic Press, London.Google Scholar
Schmidt, F. H. & Ferguson, J. H. A. 1952. Rainfall types based on wet and dry period ratios for Indonesia. Verhandel. Djawatan Meteorol. dan Geofis, Djakarta 42:1–77.Google Scholar
Scott, R. H. 1889. The climate of British North Borneo. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 15:206–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shuttleworth, W. J., Gash, J. H. C., Lloyd, C. R., Moore, C. J., Roberts, J., Marques Filho, A. de O., Fisch, G., Silva Filho, V. de P., Ribeiro, M. de N. G., Molion, L. C. B., De Abreu Sa, L. D., Nobre, J. C. A., Cabral, O. M. R., Patel, S. R. & De Moraes, J. C. 1984. Eddy correlation measurements of energy partition in Amazonian forest. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 110:1143–1162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoddart, D. R. & Walsh, R. P. D. 1992. Environmental variability and environmental extremes as factors in the island ecosystem. Atoll Research Bulletin 358:1–71.Google Scholar
Van Bemmelen, W. 1916. Droogte-jaren op Java. Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indie 75:157–179.Google Scholar
Walsh, R. P. D. 1982. Climate. Pp. 29–67 in Jermy, A. C. & Kavanagh, K. P. (eds). Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak: An Account of its Environment and Biota being the results of The Royal Geographical Society/Sarawak Government Expedition and Survey 1977–1978 Part I. Sarawak Museum Journal XXX No. 51.Google Scholar
Walsh, R. P. D. 1992. Representation and classification of tropical climates for ecological purposes using the perhumidity index. Swansea Geographer 29:109–129.Google Scholar
Walsh, R. P. D. in press. Climate in: Richards, P. W., with Walsh, R. P. D. & Baillie, I. C. The Tropical Rain Forest, Second Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Walter, H. & Lieth, H. 1960. Klimadiagramme-Weltatlas. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena.Google Scholar
Whitmore, T. C. 1975. Tropical rain forests of the Far East. First Edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Whitmore, T. C. 1984. Tropical rain forests of the Far East. Second Edition. Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Whitmore, T. C. 1989. Canopy gaps as the major determinants of forest dynamics and the two major groups of forest tree species. Ecology 70:536–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitmore, T. C. 1990. An introduction to tropical rain forests. Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Woods, P. 1989. Effects of logging, drought and fire on structure and composition of tropical forests in Sabah, Malaysia. Biotropica 21:290–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar