The occurrence of fires has frequently been used to highlight environmental hazards at regional and global scale, and as a proxy for the effectiveness of protected areas. In contrast, the mechanism behind wildfire dynamics in tropical peat land protected areas had been poorly addressed thus far. Our study provides a novel application of assessing fire patterns from a tropical peatland protected area and surrounding landscape. We investigated the importance of both climatic factors (top-down mechanism) and human interventions (bottom-up mechanism) on fire occurrences through analyzing 15-year (2001 -2015) LANDSAT and MODIS images of the Padang Sugihan Wildlife Reserve (PSWR). Fire density along side road and canal construction were analyzed jointly together with the monthly and annual precipitation, and evidences of climatic anomalies. The reserve was effective in limiting fire occurrences from surrounding landscapes only in wet years. We revealed that peat fire patterns in the protected area and the landscape matrix emerged beyond climatic factors, and the distance from canal system could explain the fire occurrences. Our results show that it is essential to address processes at a landscape level, particularly at the surroundings of the reserve, in order to increase the effectiveness of fire protection, including the development of fire-prone classes maps. 2 other causal factors, fires are frequently used as an important indicator to evaluate the 3 effectiveness management of protected areas [2, 3]. A common approach to manage fire 4 in protected areas is applying active fire management or prescribed burning [4-7] which 5 aims to reduce fuel availability for preventing and controlling wildfire [8]. Nowadays, a 6 paradigm shift resulted in managers purposely burning grassland and forests to 7maintain the ecological mechanisms which drive ecosystem dynamics and diversity [7,9]. 8 Anthropogenic and natural factors lead to different patterns of fire occurrences in 9 protected areas across various ecosystems. Fire density was found to be two times 10 higher in non-protected areas than within protected areas in Myanmar [10] and 11 PLOS 1/15Amazonian regions [2]. It has been shown that human intervention influences a 12 protected areas susceptibility to disturbance. At a global scale, forest loss rates in 13 protected areas is associated with high proportions of agricultural land in the country 14 [11]. Managing anthropogenic factors which include fewer road construction, less human 15 impact mechanisms [2] as well as fire-free land management [12] in the reserves has 16 shown their effectiveness in reducing fire-driven deforestation. In contrast to fire 17 occurrences in tropical areas, natural mechanisms caused higher fire density in 18 protected areas than in non-protected areas in West and Central Africa [13]. More fires 19 occurred in 59 percent of the area where deforestation rates dropped between 2000 and 20 2007, since more fuel was available for ignition [12]. Here, controlled ignition and active 21 fire mana...

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