Yearly wildfires are started by local farmers during the dry season in different areas of northern Thailand . Often speculators also hire people to set forests on fire in order to claim land title deeds for the areas that , post-fire , become " degraded forest " . The smoke produced by these fires is the main cause of the intense seasonal air pollution in the Thai highlands , also known as the " northern haze " . Fires also contribute to the floods in the country by denuding forest undergrowth and the dry forest soil leads to lower water intake for the trees to extract when the rains arrive
floods in the country
2011 Thailand floods
Thai highlands