Commission for Air Quality Management holds meeting with Punjab, Haryana authorities over rising cases of stubble-burning

Amidst reports of rising incidents of stubble-burning, especially during the evening in the region, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) is holding a crucial stakeholder meeting with the officials and pollution control board authorities of both Punjab and Haryana at Kisan Bhawan in Chandigarh today.

- PT News

The meeting is being carried out as a virtual cat-and-mouse game is played out between stubble-burning monitoring agencies and farmers in Punjab. The Indian Agricultural Research Institute’s Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem Monitoring and Modelling from Space starts tracking farm fires from September 15. The visible imaging radiometer suites (VIIRS) installed on Suomi NPP and MODIS Aqua satellites capture these images of farm fires as they pass over the region during the afternoon and midnight. Aware of this surveillance window, farmers have been lighting up fires in the late evening to evade detection. For nearly three years, this tactic helped them hoodwink the monitoring system that relies heavily on satellite imagery. However, this year, agencies have tweaked their tracking method instead of counting farm fires, they are now mapping and recording the total burnt area, sharing this data with pollution control authorities for action. Dr Vinay Sehgal, Principal Scientist and Professor at the Division of Agricultural Physics at CREAMS Laboratory, Delhi, said,” These satellites cross the region's pathway during the late aft