Spatio-temporal variation and propagation direction of coal fire in Jharia Coalfield, India by satellite-based multi-temporal night-time land surface temperature imaging

In this paper, the spatio-temporal variation and propagation direction of coal fire were studied in the Jharia Coalfield (JCF), India during 2006-2015 through satellite-based night-time land surface temperature (LST) imaging. The LST was retrieved from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) night-time thermal-infrared data by a robust split-window algorithm based on scene-specific regression coefficients, band-specific hybrid emissivity, and night-time atmospheric transmittance. The LST-profile-based coal fire detection algorithm was formulated through statistical analysis of the LST values along multiple transects across diverse coal fire locations in the JCF in order to compute date-specific threshold temperatures for separating thermally-anomalous and background pixels. This algorithm efficiently separates surface fire, subsurface fire, and thermally-anomalous transitional pixels. During the observation period, it was noticed that the coal fire area increased significantly, which resulted from new coal fire at many places owing to extensive opencast-mining operations. It was observed that the fire propagation occurred primarily along the dip direction of the coal seams. At places, lateral-propagation of limited spatial extent was also observed along the strike direction possibly due to spatial continuity of the coal seams along strike. Moreover, the opencast-mining activities carried out during 2009-2015 and the structurally weak planes facilitated the fire propagation. (C) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of China University of Mining & Technology.

Automated summary

In this paper, the spatio-temporal variation and propagation direction of coal fire in the Jharia Coalfield (JCF), India during 2006-2015 were studied using satellite-based night-time land surface temperature (LST) imaging. The study found that the coal fire area increased significantly, primarily propagating along the dip direction of the coal seams with some lateral propagation along the strike direction. Open-cast mining activities and structurally weak planes facilitated the fire propagation.