Bottom-up estimate of biomass burning in mainland China

Abstract

To assess the contribution of biomass burning to the emissions of atmospheric trace species in China, we estimated various biomass-burning activities using statistical data, survey data, expert estimates and a satellite data set. Fuel wood and crop residue burned as fuel and in the field are the major sources of biomass burning in China, accounting for nearly 90% of the total biomass burning on dry weight base. Field burning of crop residue estimated from satellite burned area is less than 1% of that estimated from ground survey data; because of this and because biofuel is burned indoor, the majority of biomass burning in China is not seeable from satellite. Statistical data showed that the occurrence of forest fire in China has decreased dramatically since the 1980s; however, the forest fire area detected by satellites in 2000 was 13 times that shown by statistics. Grassland fires are a minor source of biomass burning in China. We estimated carbon monoxide (CO) emission from open biomass burning (field burning of crop residue and forest and grassland fires) to be 16.5 Tg in 2000, with a 90% uncertainty range of 3.4–34 Tg. Uncertainties in CO emission factors, especially for field burning of crop residue, contributed much more to the variance than those in the activity data. This suggests the importance of narrowing the uncertainty range of emission factors.