Integración de datos espaciales para el monitoreo de contaminantes atmosféricos durante incendios

Abstract

Biomass burning is one of the main atmospheric aerosol sources in South America, which can increase human mortality due to respiratory and cardiovascular disorders. Thus, atmospheric pollutants monitoring is important, mainly in cities where daily anthropogenic emissions are considerable and can receive pollution from frequent environmental events (e.g. forest fires and soil erosion). Even when air quality monitoring is gaining importance in the region, there are significant limitations in the pollution measurements. That is the case of the city of Córdoba, Argentina, where air quality monitoring was suspended in the year 2010. However, remote sensing information could be used to quantify atmospheric aerosols, complementing ground-based measurements. Moreover, dispersion modeling can estimate the spatial distribution of atmospheric pollutants emitted. This work evaluates the integration of these databases during a vast extension forest fire in Córdoba Province that occurred during August 2009, that could be used as tools for decision makers. In spite of the limited availability of satellital information during the event, aerosol optical depth obtained from satellital products of MODIS and SeaWIFS showed an acceptable behaviour when they were evaluated with AERONET data, while modeled information by HYSPLIT satisfactorily complements satellite information.