Urban Air Pollution Monitoring Research
UX Methods research planning, conducting research, reporting and presenting findings
Stakeholder(s) Western Washington University's Geology Department
End Users People living in Seattle and other highly urbanized cities
Research Roadmap
Planning
1. I conducted background research on existing urban air monitoring technologies (2016) expenses, efficiencies, and how they are used. I found that most air monitors are on top of buildings and are few and far between, which is detrimental to their purpose. Instead, they should be monitoring the air at the height of average humans and more spatially dense because air quality could vary within feet.
2. I did a literature review on other studies that used plants as biomonitors for air quality in urban areas. Many of the studies used deciduous leaves and found that they are good indicators of air quality and weather events, such as rain, don't change the results.
3. I started to shape a research plan and hypothesized that I could use pine needles as biomonitors, which would help with leaf collection in the winter time when deciduous leaves are not growing. I wanted to compare the pollution detected by deciduous leaves and pine needles from the same areas to see if they were statistically similar.
4. I wrote a thesis plan with a timeline that lasted two years from starting the research to defending my thesis. I also wrote grant proposals and received full funding.
Research
5. Now for the field research! I went to Seattle (about a two-hour drive from Bellingham where I lived at the time) and collected 200 total leaf samples in a systematic grid from two 1 square-kilometer sample sites in Duwamish Valley (known as industrial center) and Capitol Hill (neighborhood with greener spaces). I purposely collected from heavily trafficked areas, big parks, moderate traffic areas, and large industrial zones.
As a part of field research, I reached out to a local STEM high school to recruit students to collect leaves. I taught them about my research and showed them how to collect the leaves to reduce bad data collection.
See below: Capitol Hill (left) and Duwamish Valley (right)
6. I went to the magnetism lab with my samples and prepared them to go into the magnetometer and measured their magnetism, which is a proxy for how many heavy metal pollutants are in each sample. The thinking on this is that if a leaf has more heavy metal, it doesn't grow in a leaf naturally, so it must come the stomata catching the air pollutants.
See below: darker blue circles indicate higher magnetism, while lighter indicate less. Green spaces, like parks tend to have less pollutants than streets, especially streets on bus lines.
7. I also used a scanning electron microscope, which can view samples that are thinner than a strand of hair, to get a look at the particles that these leaves were carrying. I was able to identify, the metals and the other carbon-based materials that the leaves collected from air pollution.
See below: images of a pine needle (left) and maple leaf (right) with particles on them.
Results
8. Once I had the results, I began writing my thesis. After many drafts and re-edits, I finally had a paper that I could be proud of. Read my full thesis if you're curious.
9. I defended my thesis to my department. There were some tough questions, but in the end I earned my Masters degree through hard work and dedication to improving the urban space through sustainable and environmental mechanisms.
Lessons Learned
I learned that I'm capable of successfully conducting a large-scale research project. I also learned that research is never really done, there's just a deadline. As I look back on this project, I think about other questions I want to answer like what about ground pollution? How does ground pollution affect plants and at what rates do they absorb it through their roots? My curious mind loves asking questions about the intersection between urban development and the natural environment.
