Spatial characteristics and national differences of active fires derived from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) in Mainland Southeast Asia in the dry season during 2012-2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1406-1418
Author(s):  
Ying LIU ◽  
Peng LI ◽  
Chiwei XIAO ◽  
Jia LIU ◽  
Jingqiao YE ◽  
...  
Author(s):  
Chiwei Xiao ◽  
Peng Li ◽  
Zhiming Feng ◽  
Yanzhao Yang ◽  
Zhen You ◽  
...  

Knowledge of the location, area and extent of rubber plantations is a prerequisite for assessing their ecological and environmental impacts. Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) and Yunnan province (MSEA&YN) in China are globally important rubber-planting regions. Rubber cultivation in areas at moderate and low altitudes (<1000 m) within these regions has expanded rapidly in recent years. However, datasets of maps generated at a fine spatial resolution are still unavailable for MSEA&YN. Because of this, three relevant and important questions remain unanswered: what are the northernmost boundary for rubber production in these regions, what is the highest altitude at which rubber is produced, and how are the plantations distributed in (cross-) border regions? An approach of the phenology- and Landsat-based re-normalized vegetation index (RNVI), originally developed for Xishuangbanna in southern China, is used in this study to verify the feasibility of mapping mature rubber plantations in MSEA&YN using the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager data products acquired from January to April, 2013 to 2018. Characteristics of the vertical and horizontal distributions of mature rubber plantations in MSEA&YN, as well as national differences especially in the (cross-) borders, were examined using the generated map. The results showed that the RNVI method, although tailored to the northern edge of the tropics, is useful for detecting mature rubber plantations in MSEA&YN. The latest map of mature rubber plantations indicated that they occupied a total area of 7.69 × 106 ha, accounting for 3.32% of the study area. Spatial analyses showed three typical features of the distribution: new plantations at higher (over 1000 m) and lower (below 200 m) elevations, more cultivation in the borderlands (over a half within 60 km buffers), and their northward movement (as far as 25°N). The results of this study have important implications for phenological methods verification in the tropics, and provide valuable information on mature rubber plantations in MSEA&YN.


2009 ◽  
Vol 113 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ningchuan Xiao ◽  
Tao Shi ◽  
Catherine A. Calder ◽  
Darla K. Munroe ◽  
Candace Berrett ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bradley

AbstractMost nations in mainland Southeast Asia and elsewhere have one national language as a focus of national identity and unity, supported by a language policy which promotes and develops this language. Indigenous and immigrant minority groups within each nation may be marginalized; their languages may become endangered. Some of the official national language policies and ethnic policies of mainland Southeast Asian nations aim to support both a national language and indigenous minority languages, but usually the real policy is less positive. It is possible to use sociolinguistic and educational strategies to maintain the linguistic heritage and diversity of a nation, develop bilingual skills among minority groups, and integrate minorities successfully into the nations where they live, but this requires commitment and effort from the minorities themselves and from government and other authorities. The main focus of this paper is two case studies: one of language policy and planning in Myanmar, whose language policy and planning has rarely been discussed before. The other is on the Lisu, a minority group in Myanmar and surrounding countries, who have been relatively successful in maintaining their language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kantapon Suraprasit ◽  
Rasmi Shoocongdej ◽  
Kanoknart Chintakanon ◽  
Hervé Bocherens

AbstractThe late Pleistocene settlement of highland settings in mainland Southeast Asia by Homo sapiens has challenged our species’s ability to occupy mountainous landscapes that acted as physical barriers to the expansion into lower-latitude Sunda islands during sea-level lowstands. Tham Lod Rockshelter in highland Pang Mapha (northwestern Thailand), dated between 34,000 and 12,000 years ago, has yielded evidence of Hoabinhian lithic assemblages and natural resource use by hunter-gatherer societies. To understand the process of early settlements of highland areas, we measured stable carbon and oxygen isotope compositions of Tham Lod human and faunal tooth enamel. Our assessment of the stable carbon isotope results suggests long-term opportunistic behavior among hunter-gatherers in foraging on a variety of food items in a mosaic environment and/or inhabiting an open forest edge during the terminal Pleistocene. This study reinforces the higher-latitude and -altitude extension of a forest-grassland mosaic ecosystem or savanna corridor (farther north into northwestern Thailand), which facilitated the dispersal of hunter-gatherers across mountainous areas and possibly allowed for consistency in a human subsistence strategy and Hoabinhian technology in the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia over a 20,000-year span near the end of the Pleistocene.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 1407-1423 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. D. Field ◽  
A. C. Spessa ◽  
N. A. Aziz ◽  
A. Camia ◽  
A. Cantin ◽  
...  

Abstract. The Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System is the mostly widely used fire danger rating system in the world. We have developed a global database of daily FWI System calculations, beginning in 1980, called the Global Fire WEather Database (GFWED) gridded to a spatial resolution of 0.5° latitude by 2/3° longitude. Input weather data were obtained from the NASA Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), and two different estimates of daily precipitation from rain gauges over land. FWI System Drought Code calculations from the gridded data sets were compared to calculations from individual weather station data for a representative set of 48 stations in North, Central and South America, Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia and Australia. Agreement between gridded calculations and the station-based calculations tended to be most different at low latitudes for strictly MERRA-based calculations. Strong biases could be seen in either direction: MERRA DC over the Mato Grosso in Brazil reached unrealistically high values exceeding DC = 1500 during the dry season but was too low over Southeast Asia during the dry season. These biases are consistent with those previously identified in MERRA's precipitation, and they reinforce the need to consider alternative sources of precipitation data. GFWED can be used for analyzing historical relationships between fire weather and fire activity at continental and global scales, in identifying large-scale atmosphere–ocean controls on fire weather, and calibration of FWI-based fire prediction models.


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