Fires
in North Korea
acquired April 27, 2015
27
April, 2015
Satellites
often detect fires in North Korea in April. As snow retreats in the
spring, many farmers use fire to clear away last year’s crop debris
and to fertilize the soil for the coming season. Such fires generally
remain small and produce only modest amounts of smoke. But sometimes
they escape the control of their handlers and push into forests on
the country’s mountainous terrain.
As
in several
recent years, control
was lost in April 2015. When the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
on Terra passed
over North Korea on April 27, 2015, the satellite observed several
large fires burning in the eastern part of the country. Actively
burning areas, detected by the thermal
bands of
MODIS, are outlined in red. Fields and grasslands, mainly in coastal
plains and river valleys, appear light brown. Forests at lower
elevations appear green; at higher elevations, forests are still
brown at this time of year.
Many
of the larger, smokier fires appear to be burning in forested
highlands near cultivated river valleys. MODIS first began to detect
the fires in significant numbers on April
23. By
April 27, the number of fires had increased and many had grown
significantly smokier. MODIS also observed a sizable plume drifting
east over northern Japan.
North
Korea faced a serious
drought in
the summer of 2014. While reasonably warm and wet weather was
a late-season
boon to crops in
November, a dry winter followed. Dried out forests have raised
concerns about
potential food shortages in the spring.
References
The
Washington Post (2015,
February 7) Dry
winter sparks fears of another food crisis in North Korea. April
27, 2015.
USDA
Foreign Agricultural Service (2015, February 5) Favorable
Weather in North Korea for Winter Crops. April
27, 2015.
1. Further
Reading
2. Chung
Y. & Kim H. (2008, July 19) Satellite
monitoring of forest fires and associated smoke plumes occurring in
Korea. Air
Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 1
(2), 111-118.
NASA image courtesy
Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC.
Caption by Adam Voiland.
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