April 21, 2022 - Smoke and Fire in Eastern Asia

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Smoke and Fire in Eastern Asia
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Hundreds of fires were burning in Eastern Asia in mid-April 2022,
emitting so much smoke that much of the region was covered under a pale
gray haze. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this true-color image of the
smoky scene on April 19.

Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS
instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for actively
burning fire. Although it is not possible to determine the cause of an
individual fire from satellite imagery, the location, high number, and
time of year strongly suggests these fires are agricultural in nature
and were deliberately set to manage land. That doesn’t mean that all of
the fires are used to clear land, burn stubble, renew pasture, or
prepare fields for planting. At least one wildfire has been reported in
China over the last week, and poorly managed agricultural fires may
become wildfires.

Most of the fires are spread across Northeastern China, with some
clusters in southeastern Russia near the border with China. On the
Korean Peninsula, only a few fires were seen in either North Korea or
South Korea. Northeastern China is a rich agricultural region, located
on a fertile black-earth belt, and has been called “China’s granary”
because it produces more than a fifth of China’s grain output. Major
crops include soybeans, corn, and japonica rice.

Spring planting typically takes place by late April in Northeast China,
but planting has been difficult this spring. Fertilizer and fuel costs
have risen steeply recently, and some areas are under strict
restrictions due to COVID. Outbreaks in the Jilin region, for example,
triggered lockdowns that prevented plowing and planting until at least
April 5, when some farmers could return to work as long as they
produced negative COVID tests. Jilin is China’s second-largest corn
producing region.

In addition, in response to health and climate concerns related to
widespread agricultural burning, China has instituted anti-pollution
rules that target stubble burning, demanding that farmers stop using
fire and start using machines to clear the fields. To small farmers,
machine-clearing a field is both expensive and difficult, so they often
continue to use the tried-and-true traditional methods of using fire to
prepare land ahead of sowing the season’s crops.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 4/19/2022
Resolutions: 1km (492.4 KB), 500m (2 MB),
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-04-21

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