Journal of Ecology and Rural Environment ›› 2019, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (9): 1127-1135.doi: 10.19741/j.issn.1673-4831.2018.0537

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Assessing the Responsive Relationships Between Straw Burning From MODIS Data and Air Quality in Shandong Province

SU Hui-yi1, ZHAI Meng-zhen1, WANG Wen-lin2, LI Ming-shi1,3   

  1. 1. College of Forestry, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China;
    2. Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Nanjing 210042, China;
    3. Co-Innovation Center for Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, Nanjing 210037, China
  • Received:2018-09-03 Published:2019-09-21

Abstract: Among various sources of pollution, outdoor straw burning has a great impact on air quality through releasing various kinds of air pollutants and fine particles, shaping one of the sources of air pollution. MODIS instrument has the advantages of high sensitivity, timeliness and wide spatial coverage and using its data to monitor straw burning events can quickly identify the location, amount and severity of fire spots across a wide region. MODIS data in partnership with the contextual algorithm was used to extract fire spots in Shandong Province in the current work. The values of six air quality indices including PM10, PM2.5, NO2, SO2, CO, O3, as well as the meteorological data were collected. Additionally, 17 cities in Shandong Province were grouped into two categories, coastal region and inland region according to their proximity to the coastlines to derive a targeted analysis that focuses on the influential differences in air quality imposed by straw burning. Specifically, by carrying out the spatial interpolation with daily air quality data for the two regions, the correlation between the fire points and the total air quality index of all grid points in the region was analyzed. And then the impact of contamination caused by burning straws on environmental air quality, as well as differences of air quality between coastal and inland region were discussed. As a result, a significantly positive correlation between the amount of fire spots and the total air quality index was observed. Of which, there was a significant correlation between straw burning and AQI, PM2.5, PM10 and O3, indicating that the increase in fire spots leads to an increase of air quality indices, accordingly, a poor air quality gained. Furthermore, the correlation presented in the coastal region was stronger than that presented in the inland region, indicating that the atmospheric spread condition is one of the important prerequisites when examining the environmental impacts of straw burning.

Key words: MODIS, fire spot detection, air quality, correlation analysis, straw burning

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