US Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711, USA.
US Environmental Protection Agency, Region 9, San Francisco, CA 94105, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Aug 25;20(17):4796. doi: 10.3390/s20174796.
Until recently, air quality impacts from wildfires were predominantly determined based on data from permanent stationary regulatory air pollution monitors. However, low-cost particulate matter (PM) sensors are now widely used by the public as a source of air quality information during wildfires, although their performance during smoke impacted conditions has not been thoroughly evaluated. We collocated three types of low-cost fine PM (PM) sensors with reference instruments near multiple fires in the western and eastern United States (maximum hourly PM = 295 µg/m). Sensors were moderately to strongly correlated with reference instruments (hourly averaged r = 0.52-0.95), but overpredicted PM concentrations (normalized root mean square errors, NRMSE = 80-167%). We developed a correction equation for wildfire smoke that reduced the NRMSE to less than 27%. Correction equations were specific to each sensor package, demonstrating the impact of the physical configuration and the algorithm used to translate the size and count information into PM concentrations. These results suggest the low-cost sensors can fill in the large spatial gaps in monitoring networks near wildfires with mean absolute errors of less than 10 µg/m in the hourly PM concentrations when using a sensor-specific smoke correction equation.
直到最近,野火产生的空气质量影响主要还是根据永久性固定监管空气污染监测器的数据来确定。然而,现在低成本的颗粒物(PM)传感器已被广泛用于公众,作为野火期间空气质量信息的来源,尽管它们在烟雾影响条件下的性能尚未得到彻底评估。我们在多个美国西部和东部的火灾附近与参考仪器同时使用了三种类型的低成本细颗粒物(PM)传感器(最大每小时 PM = 295µg/m)。传感器与参考仪器具有中度到高度相关性(每小时平均 r = 0.52-0.95),但对 PM 浓度的预测过高(归一化均方根误差,NRMSE = 80-167%)。我们为野火烟雾开发了一个校正方程,将 NRMSE 降低到小于 27%。校正方程针对每个传感器包特定,证明了物理配置和用于将大小和计数信息转换为 PM 浓度的算法的影响。这些结果表明,当使用特定于传感器的烟雾校正方程时,这些低成本传感器可以在野火附近的监测网络中填补大的空间空白,每小时 PM 浓度的平均绝对误差小于 10µg/m。