CAREER: Observational Constraints on Neighborhood-level Air Quality in Major United States cities and Dakar, Senegal

该项目旨在促进对美国各城市和塞内加尔达喀尔市空气污染物变化的来源和影响的了解。城市污染物分布的可变性已表明会导致污染物暴露与社区人口统计数据的不平等，从而导致健康和预期寿命方面的重大差异。计划在达喀尔进行实地考察，这将导致美国和塞内加尔学生在一项涉及物理和社会科学家的国际合作中得到培训。计划对中学到大学水平的学生以及普通大众进行教育和宣传活动。一系列数据集将被整合，包括新型的高空间分辨率二氧化氮（NO2）机载光谱仪观测，基于卫星的NO2柱，大量痕量物种的原位飞机测量，基于车辆的原位观测，基于地面的NO2柱，以及美国和塞内加尔的人口统计数据集。这项工作将进一步扩大二氧化氮卫星遥感的应用范围，以研究城市内部时空变异的控制因素，特别是它导致的空气污染不平等，并通过使用新的预测变量数据集和工作日和周末之间污染物时间变异的约束，推进土地利用回归建模方法。教育和推广活动与研究主题保持一致，包括开发中学体验式空气污染课程，探索学生在STEM中学习的动机，将STEM作为环境正义的工具，开发关于西非城市空气污染的跨学科和国际本科和研究生课程，以及创建一个视觉上吸引人的API，描绘至少20个美国城市和达喀尔的城市范围内的二氧化氮差异。以英语、西班牙语、法语和Wolof语言提供数据和代码共享以及教育内容。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project seeks to advance understanding of sources and impacts of variability of air pollutants in cities across the U.S. and in the city of Dakar, Senegal. Variability in urban pollutant distributions have shown to result in inequality in pollutant exposure with neighborhood demographics, resulting in significant disparities in health and life expectancy. Field work is planned in Dakar that will lead to the training of U.S. and Senegalese students in an international collaboration involving physical and social scientists. Education and outreach activities are planned for middle school to university level students, as well as the general public.A range of datasets will be integrated, including novel high spatial resolution nitrogen dioxide (NO2) airborne spectrometer observations, satellite-based NO2 columns, in situ aircraft measurements of numerous trace species, vehicle-based in situ observations, ground-based NO2 columns, and U.S. and Senegalese demographic datasets. The work will further expand the application of NO2 satellite remote sensing to study controls over intra-urban spatiotemporal variability, especially as it results in air pollution inequality, and advance land-use regression modeling methods through the use of new predictor variable datasets and constraints on pollutant temporal variability between weekdays and weekends. Educational and outreach activities align with research themes, including the development of a middle school experiential air pollution curriculum that explores student motivation in STEM when STEM is framed as a tool for environmental justice, the development of an interdisciplinary and international undergraduate and graduate course on West African urban air pollution, and the creation of a visually-appealing API depicting city-wide NO2 disparities in at least twenty U.S. cities and Dakar, featuring data and code sharing and educational content in English, Spanish, French, and Wolof.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.