Application of Satellite Remote Sensing in Monitoring Elevated Internal Temperatures of Landfills

• Main Authors: Rouzbeh Nazari, Husam Alfergani, Francis Haas, Maryam E. Karimi, Md Golam Rabbani Fahad, Samain Sabrin, Jess Everett, Nidhal Bouaynaya, Robert W. Peters
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-09-01
• Series: Applied Sciences
• Subjects: landfill internal elevated temperature; Landsat image processing; land surface thermal mapping; Bridgeton landfill
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/19/6801

Subsurface fires and smoldering events at landfills can present serious health hazards and<br />threats to the environment. These fires are much more costly and difficult to extinguish than open<br />fires at the landfill surface. The initiation of a subsurface fire may go unnoticed for a long period of<br />time and undetected fires may spread over a large area. Unfortunately, not all landfill operators<br />keep or publish heat elevation data and many landfills are not equipped with a landfill gas<br />extraction system to control subsurface temperatures generated from the chemical reactions within.<br />The timely and cost‐effective identification of subsurface fires is an important and pressing issue. In<br />this work, we describe a method for using satellite thermal infrared imagery at a moderate spatial<br />resolution to identify the locations of subsurface fires and monitor their migration within landfills.<br />The focus of this study was the Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill in Bridgeton, MO, USA where a<br />subsurface fire was first identified in 2010 and continues to burn today. Observations from Landsat<br />satellites over the last seventeen years were examined for surface temperature anomalies (or hot<br />spots) that may be associated with subsurface fires. The results showed that the locations of hot<br />spots identified in satellite imagery match the known locations of the subsurface fires. Changes in<br />the hot‐spot locations with time, as determined by in situ measurements, correspond to the<br />spreading routes of the subsurface fires. These results indicate that the proposed approach based<br />on satellite observations can be used as a tool for the identification of landfill subsurface fires by<br />landfill owners/operators to monitor landfills and minimize the expenses associated with<br />extinguishing landfill fires.