Spatial characteristics of air pollution in the main city area of Chengdu, China

In Chengdu, air pollution is an important and popular topic because of its impact to human health. Sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) and particulate matter (PM₁₀) are the major air pollutants caused by the usage of fossil fuels, and so forth. In this study, the spatial distribution variability of the major air pollutants across the main city area of Chengdu in 2010 was analyzed. In order to obtain the characteristics, two spatial interpolation methods based on Geographic Information System (GIS), Inverse Distance Weighted Interpolation (IDW) and Ordinary Kriging (OK), were chosen and compared. The results indicated that OK method was better to generate the prediction maps of pollutant concentrations than IDW method. High spatial diversity of NO₂, SO₂ and PM₁₀ concentrations existed, especially in the east-west direction. Between the six main districts in Chengdu, Chenghua District was polluted more seriously in 2010.