Abstract
Crop residue burning, which is a convenient approach to process excessive crop straws, has a negative impact on local and regional air quality and soil structures. China, as a major agricultural country with a large population, should take more effective measures to control crop residue burning. In this case, a better understanding of long-term spatio-temporal variations of crop residue burning in China is required. The MODIS products MOD14A1/MYD14A1 were employed in this research. Meanwhile, due to the vast territory of China, we divided the study area into seven regions based on the national administrative divisions to examine crop residue burning in each region, respectively. The temporal analysis of crop residue burning in different regions demonstrates a fluctuated, but generally upward, trend from 2003 to 2017. For monthly variations of crop residue burning in different regions, detected fire spots in June mainly concentrated in Central China (CC), East China (EC), and North China (NC). A majority of detected fire spots in Northeast China (NEC) and Northwest China (NWC) appeared in April and October. For other months, a small number of fire spots were distributed in all regions in a scattered manner. Furthermore, from a spatio-temporal perspective, this research revealed that crop residue burning in NEC was the most active among all regions both in spring and autumn. For summer, EC holds a larger proportion of burning spots than other regions. For winter, the number of burning spots in most regions was close. This research conducts a comprehensive analysis of crop residue burning in China at both a national and regional scale. The methodology and results from this research provide useful reference for better monitoring and controlling crop residue burning in China.
Highlights
Crop residue, known as crop straw, is defined as stems of such crops as wheat, rice, maize, etc., which have been reaped and dried after maturing [1,2]
By extracting crop residue burning spots using a remote sensing dataset of MODIS and a spatial distribution dataset of land-use and land-cover change, this research attempted to explore the spatial and temporal distribution of crop residue burning in China from 2003 to 2017 from both a national and regional scale
The results revealed an upward trend of crop residue burning at a national scale since 2003
Summary
Known as crop straw, is defined as stems of such crops as wheat, rice, maize, etc., which have been reaped and dried after maturing [1,2]. Before the prevalence of industrialization, there was a diversity of utilization approaches toward crop residue in rural areas within China. In Southern China, the straws of rice were usually used to make hats, mats, or building roofs. It could be used as a type of forage to feed livestock. With the rapid development of industrialization and modernization in China, the demand for crop residues in rural areas has decreased. Available online: ftp://ladsweb.nascom.nasa.gov (accessed on 10 October 2017). A Method for Satellite Identification of Surface Temperature Fields of Subpixel Resolution. Available online: http://www.resdc.cn (accessed on 10 October 2017).
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