Meet Geosciences Students Students measure air quality
| Students measure air quality at busy intersection along A&M's campus |
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To understand urban air pollution, scientists must determine the distance and length of time it takes for pollutants to travel from their source until they are reduced to negligible concentrations. Atmospheric Sciences professor Dr. Sarah Brooks is addressing this issue with a team of graduate students from her course, “Lab Methods in Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.” Although most urban air pollution studies take place in larger cities, Brooks believes that a study on Texas A&M’s campus will help isolate these sources of pollution, allowing the movement of the molecules and particles to be more easily tracked.
The instruments measured the concentrations of different pollutants such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, and NOx, a type of molecule that leads to the formation of ozone. In addition, these instruments collected weather data such as wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, and solar intensity, important factors that influence the creation and transport of these pollutants. The medium-sized town setting around Texas A&M’s campus provides Dr. Brooks with the opportunity to take a brand new approach to studying urban air pollution. "There is a growing realization that even in a town the size of College Station, the concentrations of harmful pollutants can exceed safe limits for human health at certain times. It is every important that we identify what the weather conditions and sources are during those times." In the case of College Station, sources include traffic exhaust and other locale sources as well all pollution transported from Houston. Her team plans to apply the knowledge gained from specifically studying the pollution from Texas Avenue to other towns and cities where there are far more sources of pollutants than just one main avenue. By Prescott Bishop ’11 |
For their final class project, three civil engineering graduate students, Sri Kota, Jingyi Li, and Gang Chen, and Atmospheric Sciences graduate student, Vinita Lal, teamed up to take continuous measurements of pollutants along Texas Avenue and New Main Drive from before morning rush hour to after the evening rush hour. The student researchers focused on how the concentrations of these pollutants varied with respect to distance from Texas Avenue, one of College Station’s busiest streets. By taking samples multiple times a day, Brooks and her team hope to analyze how daily weather patterns and heavy rush hour traffic affect the level of pollution.