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Connecting Crop Productivity, Residue Fires, and Air Quality over Northern India.

ABSTRACT: Northwestern India is known as the "breadbasket" of the country producing two-thirds of food grains, with wheat and rice as the principal crops grown under the crop rotation system. Agricultural data from India indicates a 25% increase in the post-monsoon rice crop production in Punjab during 2002-2016. NASA's A-train satellite sensors detect a consistent increase in the vegetation index (net 21%) and post-harvest agricultural fire activity (net ~60%) leading to nearly 43% increase in aerosol loading over the populous Indo-Gangetic Plain in northern India. The ground-level particulate matter (PM2.5) downwind over New Delhi shows a concurrent uptrend of net 60%. The effectiveness of a robust satellite-based relationship between vegetation index-a proxy for crop amounts, and post-harvest fires-a precursor of extreme air pollution events, has been further demonstrated in predicting the seasonal agricultural burning. An efficient crop residue management system is critically needed towards eliminating open field burning to mitigate episodic hazardous air quality over northern India.

SUBMITTER: Jethva H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6851147 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Connecting Crop Productivity, Residue Fires, and Air Quality over Northern India.

Jethva Hiren H Torres Omar O Field Robert D RD Lyapustin Alexei A Gautam Ritesh R Kayetha Vinay V

Scientific reports 20191112 1

Northwestern India is known as the "breadbasket" of the country producing two-thirds of food grains, with wheat and rice as the principal crops grown under the crop rotation system. Agricultural data from India indicates a 25% increase in the post-monsoon rice crop production in Punjab during 2002-2016. NASA's A-train satellite sensors detect a consistent increase in the vegetation index (net 21%) and post-harvest agricultural fire activity (net ~60%) leading to nearly 43% increase in aerosol lo ...[more]

PMID: 31719586

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Project description:Cities in the United States have announced initiatives to become more sustainable, healthy, resilient, livable, and environmentally friendly. However, indicators for measuring all outcomes related to these targets and the synergies between them have not been well defined or studied. One such relationship is the linkage between air quality with emotional well-being (EWB) and neighborhood infrastructure. Here, regulatory monitoring, low-cost sensors (LCSs), and air quality modeling were combined to assess exposures to PM2.5 and traffic-related NOx in 6 Minneapolis, MN, neighborhoods of varying infrastructure parameters (median household income, urban vs suburban, and access to light rail). Residents of the study neighborhoods concurrently took real-time EWB assessments using a smart phone application, Daynamica, to gauge happiness, tiredness, stress, sadness, and pain. Both LCS PM2.5 observations and mobile-source-simulated NOx were calibrated using regulatory observations in Minneapolis. No statistically significant (??=?0.05) PM2.5 differences were found between urban poor and urban middle-income neighborhoods, but average mobile-source NOx was statistically significantly (??=?0.05) higher in the 4 urban neighborhoods than in the 2 suburban neighborhoods. Close proximity to light rail had no observable impact on average observed PM2.5 or simulated mobile-source NOx. Home-based exposure assessments found that PM2.5 was negatively correlated with positive emotions such as happiness and to net affect (the sum of positive and negative emotion scores) and positively correlated (ie, a higher PM2.5 concentration led to higher scores) for negative emotions such as tiredness, stress, sadness, and pain. Simulated mobile-source NOx, assessed from both home-based exposures and in situ exposures, had a near-zero relationship with all EWB indicators. This was attributed to low NOx levels throughout the study neighborhoods and at locations were the EWB-assessed activities took place, both owing to low on-road mobile-source NOx impacts. Although none of the air quality and EWB responses were determined to be statistically significant (??=?0.05), due in part to the relatively small sample size, the results are suggestive of linkages between air quality and a variety of EWB outcomes.

Project description:Rice-rice system and rice fallows are no longer productive in Southeast Asia. Crop and varietal diversification of the rice based cropping systems may improve the productivity and profitability of the systems. Diversification is also a viable option to mitigate the risk of climate change. In Eastern India, farmers cultivate rice during rainy season (June-September) and land leftovers fallow after rice harvest in the post-rainy season (November-May) due to lack of sufficient rainfall or irrigation amenities. However, in lowland areas, sufficient residual soil moistures are available in rice fallow in the post-rainy season (November-March), which can be utilized for raising second crops in the region. Implementation of suitable crop/varietal diversification is thus very much vital to achieve this objective. To assess the yield performance of rice varieties under timely and late sown conditions and to evaluate the performance of dry season crops following them, three different duration rice cultivars were transplanted in July and August. In dry season several non-rice crops were sown in rice fallow to constitute a cropping system. The results revealed that tiller occurrence, biomass accumulation, dry matter remobilization, crop growth rate, and ultimately yield were significantly decreased under late transplanting. On an average, around 30% yield reduction obtained under late sowing may be due to low temperature stress and high rainfall at reproductive stages of the crop. Dry season crops following short duration rice cultivars performed better in terms of grain yield. In the dry season, toria was profitable when sown earlier and if sowing was delayed greengram was suitable. Highest system productivity and profitability under timely sown rice may be due to higher dry matter remobilization from source to sink. A significant correlation was observed between biomass production and grain yield. We infer that late transplanting decrease the tiller occurrence and assimilate remobilization efficiency, which may be responsible for the reduced grain yield.

Dataset Information

Connecting Crop Productivity, Residue Fires, and Air Quality over Northern India.

Publications

Connecting Crop Productivity, Residue Fires, and Air Quality over Northern India.

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