Local/Urban-Scale PM10 Concentration Estimation from TM Imagery

Air quality monitoring by satellite imagery is a potential complementary tool to in-situ measurements. It offers a unique opportunity to estimate air quality that is critically important for the management and surveillance of air quality in some cities of China, which have experienced elevated concentration of air pollution but lack adequate spatial-temporal coverage of air pollution monitoring. A local/urban-scale PM10 concentration estimation method is developed with 30m resolution TM imagery. The method can be used for local/urban-scale imagery under a variety of atmospheric and surface conditions. It was used to estimation the 30m resolution PM10 concentration distribution over Guangzhou on 18 July 2005. The linear correlation coefficient between the AOD (Aerosol Optical Depth) and PM10 (mass of Particulate Matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm) was 0.71 at that time. The results show that the method can work very well for estimating PM10 concentration distribution over Guangzhou. The 30m resolution result can be used not only to describe the AOD distribution but in urban-scale research.