Vegetation resilience and environmental impact following industrial mud eruption: Spatial distribution analysis

Background: Hot mudflows from Lapindo Sidoarjo are often released consistently from cracks in the soil layer and begin to submerge the surrounding land cover, such as houses, school buildings, factories, agricultural land, and vegetation. Lapindo hot mud is hot volcanic mud that comes out due to cracks in the soil layer in Siring Village, Porong District, Sidoarjo Regency and has been researched to contain heavy metal compounds and high temperatures. This causes changes in vegetation biodiversity in the Lapindo mud region. This research aims to analyze the influence of the distance to the center of the Lapindo Sidoarjo mudflow on the physical characteristics of the environment and the spatial distribution of surrounding vegetation. Methods: The method used is the transect method for taking vegetation samples and snowball sampling for taking informants to support vegetation conditions in the research area. The observation and interview data obtained were then processed and analyzed quantitatively descriptively using multiple linear regression. Findings: The analysis carried out shows that the distance from the center of the burst does not have a significant influence on the distribution of air temperature and surface temperature. However, the distance from the center of the spray influences the acidity (pH) of the soil with an influence percentage of 41.2%. In statistical analysis, it was also proven that the physical characteristics of the Lapindo mud region did not affect the diversity of life form types. Apart from that, the analysis carried out in this research also produced six types of vegetation life forms consisting of herbs, bushes, trees, vines, epiphytes, and aquatic, which were distributed randomly throughout the research area in the form of the Lapindo muddy area. Conclusion: The existence of vegetation life forms is not determined by the physical characteristics of the Lapindo mud region but is influenced by the relative location characteristics, such as aquatic vegetation that grows due to the presence of water bodies and herbaceous vegetation that can grow on any open land. Novelty/Originality of this article: It can be concluded that the emergence of the Lapindo hot mud phenomenon in Sidoarjo only affects soil acidity. Moreover, this phenomenon does not have a significant influence on the spatial distribution of surrounding vegetation.