Terengganu,Johor, Selangor Peatland dataset

This exploratory bench-scale study investigated smouldering fire behavior in tropical peat from three Peninsular Malaysia sites (Johor, Terengganu, and Selangor) by burning 27 oven-dried samples at a standardized bulk density ($296\text{ kg m}^{-3}$) in a fixed-geometry chamber. The primary finding was that higher fuel carbon content strongly correlated with shorter overall burn durations and higher mass-consumption rates ($r = 0.91$, site-adjusted $r = 0.83, p < 0.0001$), a relationship that held independently within each site and survived Bonferroni correction. However, carbon content showed no association with localized front propagation velocity derived from thermocouple arrivals ($r = 0.05, p = 0.79$), indicating that carbon content accelerates total fuel consumption rather than spatial front movement. Under these standardized moisture and bulk density conditions, sampling depth had no detectable effect on smouldering spread or peak temperatures ($427\text{ to }532^\circ\text{C}$), and an observed spatial pattern of decreasing fresh field moisture with distance from drainage canals was recorded as a field baseline. Overall, the paper establishes a repeatable bench-scale protocol and comparative baseline dataset for tropical peat combustion research rather than a direct model for field fire behavior.