Procedure
The procedure started with creating a route that allowed the marking data points in a GPS approximately every 100 feet in elevation. This route encompassed the West Chena Hills Loop in West Fairbanks and along Chena Pump Road. The points recorded were: at the middle of Pickering Drive, the highest point of Pickering, the highest point of West Chena Hills Drive, two points on Chena Hills Drive, the end of Ridgepointe Drive the meets Chena Ridge Road, and Woodriver Elementary. After recording their elevations, the following materials were used: the Met One Instruments Aerocet 831 PM2.5 monitor, car thermometer, and the altimeter to first take trial data to understand how to record data and use the PM 2.5 monitor. After the trial run, data was taken on days that were below freezing (primarily negative temperatures), had noticeable inversion, air quality warnings, or burn bans. The car was driven to each location either in the order listed or collecting data from Woodriver Elementary before the other points. The points would remain in the order they were in the loop. At each location, the car was shut off so as to not alter the PM 2.5 reading and then the following data was recorded: date, time started, the temperature, and the reading after 10 minutes of running the monitor.
After recording all necessary data, the machine was taken to the Fairbanks North Star Borough Air Quality offices to have the data downloaded and sorted by the computers, and then data was matched to the results using recorded date and time, since the PM 2.5 monitor recorded the particulate matter reading, but not GPS coordinates. After organizing the data, data was graphed using borough computer software to show where the inversion was on each day and each graph was analyzed to determine the impact the inversion had on PM 2.5 in the atmosphere. Then, this data was compared with predicted data from the Fairbanks International Airport’s data collection and data from previous years to determine if the results were accurate, or why they differed.