Terrestrial Remote Sensing for Monitoring Atmospheric Particulates

Pollution due to atmospheric particulates is a major cause of respiratory illnesses such as asthma particularly in California’s Central Valley which contains five of the ten most polluted cities in the United States. Real-time monitoring of the size and density of airborne particles is important for providing health advisories. Traditional monitoring techniques provide only sparse, localized measurements. This proposal seeks seed funding to investigate terrestrial remote sensing as a novel low-cost wide-coverage alternate to current approaches for monitoring atmospheric particulates. In particular, hyperspectral imaging will be used to estimate the size and density of ground-level particulates based on light scattering principles. The technology could also find application in measuring the solar irradiance of widely dispersed photovoltaic energy sources.