Bottom up approach to estimate air pollution of rice residue open burning in Thailand

Rice residue open burning is a farmer activity potentially contributes to global warming. This study was conducted with the objective of examining the spatial and temporal distribution of emissions from rice residue open burning in Thailand by using questionnaire survey and field experimentation. A sample of 1000 Thai farmers was interviewed in order to study the fire behaviours of farmers. One hundred and twenty rice sampling plots were selected for measuring rice residue characteristics. Of the farmer’s fire behaviour, 45% of farmer regularly uses prescribed burning technique for land preparation activities. The amount of rice residue was approximately 117.7 Mt. Although nearly 60% of total residue was subjected to burning in the fields, only 15% of rice residue is actually burned in the fields because the residue and soil have high moisture content. The burning emissions are computed at 1.67 Mt of CO, 0.04 Mt of NO_x, 0.35 Mt of PM_2.5, 0.12 Mt of PM₁₀, and 0.01 Mt of BC. Approximately 30%, 26%, and 17% of all emissions are contributed by the lower-northern, central, and western regions of Thailand, respectively. Moreover, 31% and 30% of all emissions are annually emitted from December to January and April to May over one month periods following each harvesting season. The comparisons of rice residue burning emissions provided by this study and previous studies have found the emissions discovered in this study to range from one to five times higher than the finding of previous studies. This finding demonstrates the importance of the assessment of activity data specific to farming fire characteristics.