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Agricultural Fires in European Russia, Belarus, and Lithuania and Their Impact on Air Quality, 2002–2012

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Land-Cover and Land-Use Changes in Eastern Europe after the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991

Abstract

This chapter describes the first research to quantify air pollution emissions at a moderate to coarse scale from agricultural burning in Belarus, Lithuania, and European Russia using MODIS and Landsat-based estimates of fire, land-cover and land-use. Agricultural burning in Belarus, Lithuania, and European Russia showed a strong and consistent seasonal geographic pattern from 2002 to 2012, with the majority of fires occurring from March to June and a smaller peak in July and August. Over this 11-year period, there was a decrease in both cropland and pasture burning throughout the region. For Smolensk Oblast, a Russian administrative region with comparable agro-environmental conditions to Belarus and Lithuania, a detailed analysis of Landsat-based burned area estimations for croplands, pastures and field data collected in summer 2014 showed that the agricultural burning area can be up to 10 times larger than the 1 km MODIS active fire estimates. Using the annual MODIS and Landsat-based burned area estimations, we identified 25 carbon, particulate matter , volatile organic carbon (VOCs) , and harmful air pollutants (HAPs) emissions for all agricultural burning, including both croplands and pastures. In general, European Russia is the main source of agricultural burning emissions. Lithuania and Belarus have relatively minor contributions. Indeed, emissions from certain agricultural burning air pollutants in European Russia are so large that they are equivalent to 5 % of emissions from all sectors (industry, energy, transportation, all sources of fire) in Lithuania and likely in other neighboring Eastern European countries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michigan Tech Research Institute, Michigan Technological University, Ann Arbor, MI, 48105, USA

    Jessica L. McCarty & David M. Banach

  2. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Alexander Krylov, Alexandra Tyukavina, Peter Potapov & Svetlana Turubanova

  3. Department of Geosciences and Natural Resources Management, University of Copenhagen, Øster Voldgade 10, 1350, København K, Denmark

    Alexander V. Prishchepov

  4. Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Strasse 2, 06120, Halle, Saale, Germany

    Alexander V. Prishchepov

Authors
  1. Jessica L. McCarty
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  2. Alexander Krylov
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  3. Alexander V. Prishchepov
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  4. David M. Banach
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  5. Alexandra Tyukavina
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  6. Peter Potapov
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  7. Svetlana Turubanova
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Correspondence to Jessica L. McCarty .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. NASA Headquarters, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Garik Gutman

  2. Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Volker Radeloff

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McCarty, J.L. et al. (2017). Agricultural Fires in European Russia, Belarus, and Lithuania and Their Impact on Air Quality, 2002–2012. In: Gutman, G., Radeloff, V. (eds) Land-Cover and Land-Use Changes in Eastern Europe after the Collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42638-9_9

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