Abstract
Biomass burning is a global phenomenon with agriculture residue burning having a sizeable share. Biomass burning is a major source of emission of green house gases (GHGs). Thus the space-based observations of global distribution of fire form a key component of climate change studies. This study is a step towards understanding the spatio-temporal occurrence of agricultural residues burning in Indo-Gangetic plains of India using fire products from space borne satellites. The 3 years daily active fire data of MODIS (Aqua/Terra) from August, 2006 to July, 2009 have been used in this study. The data analysis showed that out of total fire events, around 69% contribution comes from agricultural areas and remaining (31%) comes from non-agricultural areas. This is mainly due to the intensive cultivation in this belt. The characterisation analysis revealed that, 84% of agriculture residues burning is from Rice-Wheat system (RWS) alone and remaining 16% in other types of crop rotations. The fire incidents were very high in October–December (55%) compared to that in March–May (36%), further indicating that burning of rice residue is more prevalent than that of wheat.
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Acknowledgements
The authors duly acknowledge the support extended by R R Navalgund, Director, SAC(ISRO) and J S Parihar, Dy. Director, EPSA & Mission Director, EOAM, SAC (ISRO), Ahmedabad. The authors are thankful to S S Ray for critical review of the manuscript. The authors are also thankful to all data providers at MODIS fire information system, Geoinformatics center, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand and at SAC (ISRO), Ahmedabad.
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Singh, C.P., Panigrahy, S. Characterisation of Residue Burning from Agricultural System in India using Space Based Observations. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 39, 423–429 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-011-0119-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-011-0119-x