Monitoring of active fire events due to paddy residue burning in Indo-Gangetic plains using thermal remote sensing

Abstract

In India, stubble burning is frequently practiced in the dominant rice-growing states of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, primarily in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. We attempted monitoring and mapping of the active fire events in real time for all the 3 states by acquiring thermal datasets from 3 different sensors i.e. Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) at 375m aboard SumoNPP, Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MODIS) at 1000m aboard Terra & Aqua, and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) at 1,100m aboard NOAA 18/19 & MetOp 1/2, made available by IARI Satellite Ground Station during Kharif crop harvest season (October-November) 2018. The standard algorithm of detection of the temperature of a pixel at (4.0 μm and/or 10 to 12 μm) and its difference from the temperature of surrounding pixels was employed for day and night passes. Analysis of active fire locations detected from VIIRS, MODIS and AVHRR between 01st October and 30th November 2018 suggests continuing practice of stubble burning with a total of 75563 burning events distributed as 59695, 9232 and 6636 in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, respectively. District-wise monitoring showed a significant upsurge of fire events during the study period in the south-western and eastern districts of Punjab. Intense fire was witnessed in northern districts of Haryana and western districts of Uttar Pradesh. Comparative analysis shows that the burning events in the current year up till 30th November 2018 are 85% of the events detected in 2017 and about 59.10% of the events detected in 2016. It implies that the burning of rice stubble in the current year has reduced significantly over the past years due to various scheme implemented by the State and Central government.