Particulate Matter Contributions from Agricultural Tilling Operations in an Irrigated Desert Region.

Sources of regional particulate matter (PM), particularly agricultural operations, must be understood in order to manage the air quality in irrigated dry climates. Direct monitoring measurements alone are useful, but not sufficient, to estimate regional PM source concentrations. This paper combines modeling with ground (point) and airplane (spatial) measurement methods to estimate regional PM10 (PM diameter≤10 μm) contributions from agricultural operations.

A comparison of Lagrangian model estimates to light detection and ranging (LIDAR) measurements of dust plumes from field tilling.

A Lagrangian particle model has been adapted to examine human exposures to particulate matter < or = 10 microm (PM10) in agricultural settings. This paper reports the performance of the model in comparison to extensive measurements by elastic LIDAR (light detection and ranging). For the first time, the LIDAR measurements allowed spatially distributed and time dynamic measurements to be used to test the predictions of a field-scale model.