Other contestants remaining in the fight for the $1 million prize include US research firm Bell Geospace and Rubotori Petrotech Indonesia; Hungary's NARIC Forest Research Institute; US Applied GeoSolutions and National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (Lapan); Germany's Remote Sensing Solutions, Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and Sriwijaya University; local surveyor firm EXSA Internasional and Singapore's Forest Inform and local researcher team DRYAS.

"We expect that the method resulted from the competition can improve the Indonesian National Standard, or SNI, mapping out the country's peat land which can be more efficient and effective," Priyadi Kardono, the head of the Geospatial Information Agency, said on Wednesday (22/06).

The agency organizes the competition with support from the philanthropic David and Lucile Packard foundation and independent research firm World Resources Institute  Indonesia.

Indonesia is the home of the largest tropical peat land in the world, that help stabilizing the world climate. The country hosts 14.9 million hectares out of 400 million hectares of the world's total peat land. It holds 22.5 to 43.5 giga tons of carbon, one third of the world's reserves and equivalent to 17-33 billion passengers vehicle emissions within one year.

But, the change of land use and land clearing using fires has caused massive release of the carbon in the past year.

"The result of this competition will help determining where to locate the fire and which areas should be conserved and utilized," said Nirarta Samadhi, Director of WRI Indonesia.

The teams will present their final solution in June next year.