October 28, 2020 - Fires in India

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   Fires in India
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   On October 27, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
   (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
   dozens of fires burning in the state of Punjab, India. Punjab, which
   lies in northwestern India adjacent to Pakistan, lies in a fertile
   alluvial plain that is also rich in water resources. With these assets,
   agriculture is vital to Punjab’s economy. The state produces two-thirds
   of India’s annual wheat production, leading to the nickname “India’s
   breadbasket”.

   Fire is a widely used tool for land management in traditional
   agricultures. Farmers use fire for many purposes, including to clear
   the old crops from a field, to prepare land for planting new crops, to
   open land for agricultural purposes, and to renew pasture. In Punjab in
   the autumn, fire is frequently used to burn stubble from older crops.
   Because widespread use of fire creates smoke which increases air
   pollution across Northern India, stubble burning has been banned in
   much of India. However, when farmers do not have the needed, expensive
   farm equipment to rid their farms of organic debris, they often turn to
   fire.

   In this image, dozens of red “hot spots” can be seen in the green
   fields at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains and east of the pale gray
   line that represent the border between Pakistan and India. Each of
   these red dots mark areas where the thermal bands on the MODIS
   instrument has detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
   smoke, as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning fire.
   While it is not possible to determine the cause of a fire from
   satellite imagery, the widespread nature, the location, and the time of
   year strongly suggests these are primarily agricultural fires. As
   typical for stubble fires in this region, the smoke blows to the south
   and east, thickening into a layer across the valleys south of the
   Himalayas.

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Terra
   Date Acquired: 10/27/2020
   Resolutions:  1km (298.1 KB),  500m (1 MB),  250m (3.7 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=2020-10-28
 
