Challenges due to Stubble burning
19 November, 2024 - The Hindu
Stubble burning
Farmers set fire to paddy stubble to quickly clear the agricultural fields for sowing wheat as the window between harvesting paddy and sowing wheat — mid-October to mid-November — is short.
Decline in Punjab and Haryana
Despite a five-year decline in the instances of stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana.
Record in Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh that recorded the highest number of stubble burning incidents this year.
Satellite based tracking
Experts suggest that the current approach to satellite-based tracking of farm fires by government agencies may be leading to under-reporting the number of fires.
Multiple reports of farmers in Punjab and Haryana “burning stubble after around 4 p.m.” to escape the watch of satellites.
Satellites used
Data on fire counts are from a heat-sensing instrument on two American satellites — Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20 polar-orbiting satellites.
Instruments on polar-orbiting satellites typically observe a wildfire at a given location a few times a day as they orbit earth, pole to pole.
They pass over India from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
The instrument on them, called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), can sense aerosols, smoke, heat and is considered the most accurate to track wildfres across the globe.
Challenges in using satellite data
While the satellites map any particular location twice in 24 hours, they can miss fires that are set and extinguished outside the period of tracking.
Data from another satellite, the GEO-KOMSAT 2A, a Korean satellite that, unlike the polar satellites, tracked the same swathe of earth continuously, seemed to suggest that there was a spike in smoke and fires in the late afternoon in the Punjab province in Pakistan and Punjab in India.
Bharat's contribution in farm fires
Bharat's highest paddy cultivator, has been responsible for 50-60% of farm fires in most years.
Way forward
Newer satellite data parameter, such as estimating the actual extent of fields burned
