scholarly journals Investigation of Indoor and Outdoor Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations in Schools in Salt Lake City, Utah

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L Mendoza ◽  
Tabitha M Benney ◽  
Ryan Bares ◽  
Benjamin Fasoli ◽  
Corbin Anderson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Fine Particulate Matter ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Outdoor Air ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor

Every day around 93% of children under the age of 15 (1.8 billion children) breathe outdoor air that is so polluted it puts their health and development at serious risk. Due to the pandemic, however, ventilation of buildings using outdoor air has become an important safety technique to prevent the spread of COVID-19. With the mounting ev-idence suggesting that air pollution is impactful to human health and educational out-comes, this contradictory guidance may be problematic in schools with higher air pol-lution levels, but keeping kids COVID-19 free and in school to receive their education is now more pressing than ever. To understand if all schools in an urban area are ex-posed to similar outdoor air quality and if school infrastructure protects children equally indoors, we installed research grade sensors to observe PM2.5 concentrations in indoor and outdoor settings to understand how unequal exposure to indoor and out-door air pollution impacts indoor air quality among high- and low-income schools in Salt Lake City, Utah. Based on this approach, we found that during atmospheric inver-sions and dust events, there was a lag ranging between 35 to 73 minutes for the out-door PM2.5 concentrations to follow a similar temporal pattern as the indoor PM2.5. This lag has policy and health implications and may help to explain the rising concerns re-garding reduced educational outcomes related to air pollution in urban areas. These data and resulting analysis show that poor air quality may impact school settings, and the potential implications with respect to environmental inequality.

scholarly journals CO2 and Carbon Emissions from Cities: Linkages to Air Quality, Socioeconomic Activity, and Stakeholders in the Salt Lake City Urban Area

2018 ◽  
Vol 99 (11) ◽  
pp. 2325-2339 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Lin ◽  
Logan Mitchell ◽  
Erik Crosman ◽  
Daniel L. Mendoza ◽  
Martin Buchert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
The United States ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
The World ◽  
Lake City

AbstractUrban areas are responsible for a substantial proportion of anthropogenic carbon emissions around the world. As global populations increasingly reside in cities, the role of urban emissions in determining the future trajectory of carbon emissions is magnified. Consequently, a number of research efforts have been started in the United States and beyond, focusing on observing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and relating its variations to carbon emissions in cities. Because carbon emissions are intimately tied to socioeconomic activity through the combustion of fossil fuels, and many cities are actively adopting emission reduction plans, such urban carbon research efforts give rise to opportunities for stakeholder engagement and guidance on other environmental issues, such as air quality.This paper describes a research effort centered in the Salt Lake City, Utah, metropolitan region, which is the locus for one of the longest-running urban CO2 networks in the world. The Salt Lake City area provides a rich environment for studying anthropogenic emissions and for understanding the relationship between emissions and socioeconomic activity when the CO2 observations are enhanced with a) air quality observations, b) novel mobile observations from platforms on light-rail public transit trains and a news helicopter, c) dense meteorological observations, and d) modeling efforts that include atmospheric simulations and high-resolution emission inventories.Carbon dioxide and other atmospheric observations are presented, along with associated modeling work. Examples in which the work benefited from and contributed to the interests of multiple stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, air quality managers, municipal government, urban planners, industry, and the general public) are discussed.

scholarly journals Connectivity and Usership of Two Types of Multi-Modal Transportation Network: A Regional Trail and a Transit-Oriented Commercial Corridor

Urban Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivis García ◽  
Jeni Crookston
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Active Transportation ◽  
Light Rail ◽  
The North ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Key Aspects

This article explores concepts related to connectivity and usership of the Jordan River Parkway Trail (JRPT) and the North Temple corridor—two locations or nodes that link together in a larger transportation network along the west side of Salt Lake City, Utah, a low-income, racially and ethnically diverse area. The JRPT is a multi-use trail providing regional connectivity for bicycles and pedestrians. It intersects North Temple, a transit development corridor accommodating automobiles, light rail, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians. Although the purposes of each corridor differ, one being recreational and one being commercial, the modes of transportation for each corridor overlap through active transportation—that is, biking and walking. The questions that drive this paper are: (1) How are these two neighborhood assets are connected and form a larger transportation network? and, (2) How can connectivity and usership be improved? The idea of increasing the utilization of the JRPT through increasing destinations along North Temple and vice versa is explored. Community feedback was gathered through a survey which was distributed to 299 residents who live less than a mile from each subnetwork. Extracted from the responses were key aspects of connectivity, accessibility, and the purposes of each corridor for the community as a whole to understand how they are connected and how they affect each other. More broadly, urban policy recommendations that increase active transportation connectivity and usership of two sets of links—that is, regional trails and transit-oriented corridors such as the JRPT and the North Temple corridor are described.

scholarly journals Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution Monitoring Developments in the Municipality of Thessaloniki – Preliminary Actions from Three European Funded Projects

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Papastergios ◽  
Paraskevi Tzoumaka ◽  
Apostolos Kelessis
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Pollution Monitoring ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Outdoor Air ◽  
Air Pollution Monitoring ◽  
Outdoor Air Pollution ◽  
The City ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor

Air pollution has been one of the first environmental problems to be addressed by the EU and for this reason clean air is considered essential to good health. Information availability and understanding of the air quality issue is essential part of tackling it with efficiency. Having the latter in mind, the Municipality of Thessaloniki has considered relative environmental actions as an important priority and made significant efforts to include them in its short-term and long-term, already developed, strategies. Through these strategies the Municipality became partner in three important EU funded projects that are dealing with indoor and outdoor air pollution monitoring actions, namely CUTLER, AIRTHINGS, and LIFE SMART IN'AIR. The successful implementation of these projects will add to the knowledge of indoor and outdoor air quality in the City of Thessaloniki, whereas, at the same time, will improve the resilience of the city and the well being of its citizens.

scholarly journals The Traverse Ridge Paleoseismic Site and Ruptures Crossing the Boundary Between the Provo and Salt Lake City Segments of the Wasatch Fault Zone, Utah, United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan A. Toké ◽  
Joseph Phillips ◽  
Christopher Langevin ◽  
Emily Kleber ◽  
Christopher B. DuRoss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fault Zone ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
Fault Segment ◽  
Segment Boundary ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Fault Trace ◽  
Wasatch Fault

How structural segment boundaries modulate earthquake behavior is an important scientific and societal question, especially for the Wasatch fault zone (WFZ) where urban areas lie along multiple fault segments. The extent to which segment boundaries arrest ruptures, host moderate magnitude earthquakes, or transmit ruptures to adjacent fault segments is critical for understanding seismic hazard. To help address this outstanding issue, we conducted a paleoseismic investigation at the Traverse Ridge paleoseismic site (TR site) along the ∼7-km-long Fort Canyon segment boundary, which links the Provo (59 km) and Salt Lake City (40 km) segments of the WFZ. At the TR site, we logged two trenches which were cut across sub-parallel traces of the fault, separated by ∼175 m. Evidence from these exposures leads us to infer that at least 3 to 4 earthquakes have ruptured across the segment boundary in the Holocene. Radiocarbon dating of soil material developed below and above fault scarp colluvial packages and within a filled fissure constrains the age of the events. The most recent event ruptured the southern fault trace between 0.2 and 0.4 ka, the penultimate event ruptured the northern fault trace between 0.6 and 3.4 ka, and two prior events occurred between 1.4 and 6.2 ka (on the southern fault trace) and 7.2 and 8.1 ka (northern fault trace). Colluvial wedge heights of these events ranged from 0.7 to 1.2 m, indicating the segment boundary experiences surface ruptures with more than 1 m of vertical displacement. Given these estimates, we infer that these events were greater than Mw 6.7, with rupture extending across the entire segment boundary and portions of one or both adjacent fault segments. The Holocene recurrence of events at the TR site is lower than the closest paleoseismic sites at the adjacent fault segment endpoints. The contrasts in recurrence rates observed within 15 km of the Fort Canyon fault segment boundary may be explained conceptually by a leaky segment boundary model which permits spillover events, ruptures centered on the segment boundary, and segmented ruptures. The TR site demonstrates the utility of paleoseismology within segment boundaries which, through corroboration of displacement data, can demonstrate rupture connectivity between fault segments and test the validity of rupture models.

scholarly journals Detection and variability of combustion-derived vapor in an urban basin

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard P. Fiorella ◽  
Ryan Bares ◽  
John C. Lin ◽  
James R. Ehleringer ◽  
Gabriel J. Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Water Vapor ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Atmospheric Stability ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Combustion Products ◽  
Vapor Source ◽  
Excess Value ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Co2 Excess

Abstract. Water emitted during combustion may comprise a significant portion of ambient humidity (> 10 %) in urban areas, where combustion emissions are strongly focused in space and time. Stable water vapor isotopes can be used to apportion measured humidity values between atmospherically transported and combustion-derived water vapor, as combustion vapor possesses an unusually negative deuterium excess value (d-excess, d = δ2H − 8δ18O). We investigated the relationship between d-excess of atmospheric vapor, ambient CO2 concentrations, and atmospheric stability across four winters in Salt Lake City, UT. We found a robust inverse relationship between CO2 excess above background and d-excess on sub-diurnal to seasonal timescales, which was most prominent during periods of strong atmospheric stability that occur during Salt Lake City winter. We developed a framework for partitioning changes in water vapor d-excess between advective changes in vapor and the addition of combustion derived vapor. Using a Keeling-style mixing model approach, we estimated the d-excess of combustion derived vapor in Salt Lake City to be between −125 ‰ and −308 ‰, broadly consistent with theoretical estimates. Moreover, our analysis highlights that changes in the observed d-excess during periods of high atmospheric stability cannot be explained without a vapor source possessing a strongly negative d-excess value. Further refinements in our estimate of the isotopic composition of combustion derived vapor require constraints on valley-scale stoichiometry between CO2 and H2O in combustion products, yet our results demonstrate the utility of stable water vapor isotopes to constrain contributions of combustion to urban humidity and meteorology.

scholarly journals Use of Salt Lake City URBAN 2000 Field Data to Evaluate the Urban Hazard Prediction Assessment Capability (HPAC) Dispersion Model

2005 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Chang ◽  
Steven R. Hanna ◽  
Zafer Boybeyi ◽  
Pasquale Franzese
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Dispersion Model ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Model Configuration ◽  
Meteorological Input ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Lake City ◽  
Urban Hazard ◽  
Random Scatter

Abstract After the terrorist incidents on 11 September 2001, there is a greatly heightened concern about the potential impacts of acts of terrorism involving the atmospheric release of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) materials in urban areas. In response to the need for an urban CBRN model, the Urban Hazard Prediction Assessment Capability (Urban HPAC) transport and dispersion model has been developed. Because HPAC is widely used by the Department of Defense community for planning, training, and operational and tactical purposes, it is of great importance that the new model be adequately evaluated with urban datasets to demonstrate its accuracy. This paper describes evaluations of Urban HPAC using the “URBAN 2000” urban tracer and meteorological field experiment data from Salt Lake City, Utah. Four Urban HPAC model configuration options and five plausible meteorological input data options—ranging from data-sparse to data-rich scenarios—were considered in the study, thus leading to a total of 20 possible model combinations. For the maximum concentrations along each sampling arc for each intensive operating period (IOP), the 20 Urban HPAC model combinations gave consistent mean overpredictions of about 50%, with a range over the 20 model combinations from no overprediction to a factor-of-4 overprediction in the mean. The median of the random scatter for the 20 model combinations was about a factor of 3 of the mean, with a range over the 20 model combinations between a factor of about 2 and 9. These performance measures satisfy previously established acceptance criteria for dispersion models.

scholarly journals Weather and Air Quality Drive the Winter Use of Utah’s Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3582
Author(s):  
Hongchao Zhang ◽  
Jordan Smith
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Outdoor Recreation ◽  
Salt Lake ◽  
Salt Lake City ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Daily Weather ◽  
Daily Weather Data ◽  
Lake City ◽  
The City

Winter outdoor recreation opportunities in Utah are directly impacted by the effects of climate change and deteriorating air quality. We examine the influences of daily weather conditions and air quality on winter use of two prominent Utah canyons located just outside Salt Lake City-Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. Daily weather data were collected both within the canyons and in Salt Lake City; daily air quality data were collected for just Salt Lake City. We hypothesized that desirable weather within the canyons (i.e., cooler temperatures, more snowfall, and deeper snow depths) serves as a “pull” factor, positively influencing the volume of traffic. We also hypothesized that poor air quality within the city acts as a “push” factor on individuals’ travel behavior, this too would positively influence the volume of traffic up the canyons. We used a panel time-series regression model to determine the influence of both these “push” and “pull” factors on use of the canyons during the winter months. Our results revealed that, as expected, cooler temperatures and greater amounts of snow in the canyons, as well as poorer air quality in the city, have a positive and significant influence on winter canyon use. These findings suggest that warmer winter temperatures, as well as deteriorating air quality in the city, may have substantial impacts on Utah’s outdoor recreation economy.

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