Whitty, RCW orcid.org/0000-0003-0192-0960, Pfeffer, MA, Ilyinskaya, E orcid.org/0000-0002-3663-9506 et al. (17 more authors) (2022) Assessing the effectiveness of low-cost air quality monitors for identifying volcanic SO2 and PM downwind from Masaya volcano, Nicaragua. Volcanica, 5 (1). pp. 33-59. ISSN 2610-3540
Abstract
Gas and particulate matter (PM) emissions from Masaya volcano, Nicaragua, cause substantial regional volcanic air pollution (VAP). We evaluate the suitability of low-cost SO2 and PM sensors for a continuous air-quality network. The network was deployed for six months in five populated areas (4–16 km from crater). The SO2 sensors failed and recorded erroneous values on multiple occasions, likely due to corrosion, requiring significant maintenance commitment. The PM sensors were found to be robust but data required correction for humidity. SO2 measurements could not be used as stand-alone tools to detect occurrence of VAP episodes (VAPE), but an SO2/PM correlation reliably achieved this at near-field stations, as confirmed by meteorological forecasts and satellite imagery. Above-background PM concentrations reliably identified VAPE at both near-field and far-field stations. We suggest that a continuous network can be built from a combination of low-cost PM and SO2 sensors with a greater number of PM-only sensors.
Metadata
Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | SO2; PM; Masaya; Volcano; Nicaragua; Low-Cost; Air-Quality |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst of Geophysics and Tectonics (IGT) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 21 Apr 2022 17:07 |
Last Modified: | 21 Apr 2022 17:14 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Volcanica |
Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.30909/vol.05.01.1339 |