Studies on aerosol optical depth in biomass burning areas using satellite and ground-based observations

Biomass burning in the tropics is a source of trace gas fluxes and particulate matter. During the last decade, the shifting cultivation practices have been increased in the tropical forest of Eastern Ghats, Andhra Pradesh, India. In order to quantify the fluxes emitted from the biomass burning due to shifting cultivation practices, a field experiment has been conducted on February 16–25, 1999. The present study provides the variation of aerosol optical depth over the shifting cultivation areas of Rampa Revenue Division, Eastern Ghats using a sunphotometer in synchronism with satellite data. Optical depth values increased up to 2.0 during the burning phase and then returned to normal values (0.2–0.5). The atmospheric correction of the satellite data using the optical depth values suggested improvement in the overall contrast of the image and increase in the dynamic range of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) values of various features in the image.