Manal Zorigtbaatar

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (January 8 - March 9)：

Zorigtbaatar is working on air quality research at the Marron institute of Urban Management. Government institutes are spending a lot of money to monitor and analyze the air pollution data. NASA satellites measure the pollution using strata grid lines over cities. Some cities are fairly big and so cannot fit into the grid cell, while others are small or located on the edge of the ocean, which makes it difficult to measure exact pollution levels since grid cell parts in the ocean do not affect the pollution level of the city. She has already mapped the urban expansion of 200 cities over time to find the appropriate number of grid cells that the cities can fit within. She will compare pollution levels of NO2, Ozone and PM2.5 in each city over time and will examine how grid cell size affect the actual pollution data. Zorigtbaatar’s research goal is to highlight the importance of considering urban expansion in measuring pollution levels. Many cities in China have expanded by two or three times in the last 20 years. Zorigtbaatar would like to know what kind of problems and solutions they have for environmental issues that come along with growth of the country in depth.