Faculty Sponsor

Christopher Iceman

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/Program

Chemistry

Presentation Type

Poster Presentation

Symposium Date

Summer 7-29-2022

Abstract

Currently, there are seven PurpleAir sensors deployed throughout Lake and Porter counties in cities including Gary, Chesterton, Valparaiso, and Schererville as part of the North Lake County Environmental Partnership (NLCEP). Communities have been partnering with Valparaiso University in order to set up and help maintain the PurpleAir sensors in their municipalities. In addition to setup and monitoring, communities are learning about their local air quality and the monitoring systems in place. We additionally observe air quality metrics for these sensors with attention to particulate concentrations and compare to spatial and meteorological factors. Within the Gary and Valparaiso areas, sensors have qualitative trends. Relative to a 5-mile radius in the Gary area, the distributions of particulates are not the same within the 95% confidence interval. Meteorological factors like humidity and pressure have an effect on the particulate concentrations and trends in pressure where particulate concentrations data show a transposed relationship. Anthropogenic spikes in particulate matter (PM1.0) are modeled with meteorological data with the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory Model (HYSPLIT) to evaluate particulate origin.

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