Influence of biomass burning on local air pollution in mainland Southeast Asia from 2001 to 2016

(a) Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba 3058506, Japan
(b) Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 0608589, Japan
(c) School of Mechanics and Electrics Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China
(d) School of Geographical Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
(e) School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 0608589, Japan
(f) Research Center of the Economy of the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River and the Key Research Base of Humanity, Ministry of Education, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing 40067, China
(g) College of Tourism and Land Resources, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing 40067, China
In this study, various remote sensing data, modeling data and emission inventories were integrated to analyze the tempo-spatial distribution of biomass burning in mainland Southeast Asia and its effects on the local ambient air quality from 2001 to 2016. Land cover changes have been considered in dividing the biomass burning into four types: forest fires, shrubland fires, crop residue burning and other fires. The results show that the monthly average number of fire spots peaked at 34,512 in March and that the monthly variation followed a seasonal pattern, which was closely related to precipitation and farming activities. The four types of biomass burning fires presented different tempo-spatial distributions. Moreover, the monthly Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), concentration of particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM_2.5) and carbon monoxide (CO) total column also peaked in March with values of 0.62, 45 μg/m³ and 3.25 × 10¹⁸ molecules/cm², respectively. There are significant correlations between the monthly means of AOD (r = 0.74, P < 0.001), PM_2.5 concentration (r = 0.88, P < 0.001), and CO total column (r = 0.82, P < 0.001) and the number of fire spots in the fire season. We used Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) model to resolve the sources of PM_2.5 into 3 factors. The result indicated that the largest contribution (48%) to annual average concentration of PM_2.5 was from Factor 1 (dominated by biomass burning), followed by 27% from Factor 3 (dominated by anthropogenic emission), and 25% from Factor 2 (long-range transport/local nature source). The annually anthropogenic emission of CO and PM_2.5 from 2001 to 2012 and the monthly emission from the Emission Database for Global Atmosphere Research (EDGAR) were consistent with PMF analysis and further prove that biomass burning is the dominant cause of the variation in the local air quality in mainland Southeast Asia.

Cite:

Shuai Yin, Xiufeng Wang, Xirui Zhang, Meng Guo, Moe Miura, Yi Xiao, Influence of biomass burning on local air pollution in mainland Southeast Asia from 2001 to 2016, Environmental Pollution, Volume 254, Part A, 2019, 112949, ISSN 0269-7491, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.07.117.