Project 1 - ARUNAN RABINDRAN

CS526 - Spring 2009

 

Regional & Seasonal Trends

Annual Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Composition for 2002 - 2007

 

Seasonal (2 seasons)

COOL MONTHS * (only COOL months has been represented)

WARM MONTHS

Regional (6 regions)

Midwest

Northwest

North Central

Northeast

Southern California

Southeast

Particulate Matter (5 pollutants)

Sulfate

Nitrate

EC (Elemental Carbon)

OC (Organic Carbon)

Crustal

Each Data-point (PM2.5 composition - ug/m3)

region/year+season/pollutant

60 data-points per year per region

360 data-points in all (180 per season)

From regional websites

Region 1 - New England (connecticut, maine, massachusetts, new hampshire, rhode island, vermont & 10 tribal nations

Region 2 -  ?? (new jersey, new york, puerto rico, us virgin islands, seven tribal nations)

Region 3 - The Mid-Atlantic States (delaware, district of columbia, maryland, pennsylvania, virginia, west virginia)

Region 4 - Southeast (alabama, florida, georgia, kentucky, mississippi, north carolina, south carolina, tennessee and 6 tribes)

Region 5 - ?? (illinois, indiana, michigan, minnesota, ohio, wisconsin and 35 tribes)

Region 6 - ?? (arkansas, louisiana, new mexico, oklahoma, texas and 65 tribes)

Region 7 - ?? (iowa, kansas, missouri, nebraska and 9 tribal nations)

Region 8 - ?? (colorado, montana, north dakota, south dakota, utah, wyoming and 27 tribal nations)

Region 9 - Pacific Southwest (arizona, california, hawaii, nevada, pacific islands, over 140 tribal nations)

Region 10 - Pacific Northwest (alaska, idaho, oregon, washington and native tribes)

Accompanying Data Table - Showing stations

42 monitoring stations worth plotting to demarcate regions

 

 

 

 

The Visualization Model

Two charts for cool months & hot months

One chart for monitoring stations plotting

 

Seasonal Charts

- demarcate regions and draw square 2D map (approximated from monitoring stations plot)

- plot data points for 5 different pollutants over 6 years

- sulfate(maroon), nitrate(brown), elemental carbon(black), organic carbon(dark gray), other crustal elements(pale brown)

- height of the glyphs adjusted to represent data values for particular year for particular region

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things Used

Oil Pastels

 

Cotton Swabs

 

Macbook Shipping Material

Some pushpins & Lots of krazy glue.

 

How it was done..

1. Plotted monitoring stations using pushpins to simplify regions to squares

2. Painted swabs the right colors for each pollutant

3. Krazy glued the swabs to the regions after cutting them to scale based on the data

4. Could see regional concentration of particulate matter based on area of the regions

 

 

 

 

The final model..