Research News & Features

Environment

• Other Research Links
• Contact Info

• Home
• Arts & Culture
• Environment
  • Current Research
  • Archive
• Health and Life Science
• Innovation & Leadership
• Physical Science & Technology
• Security & Safety
• Society

WSU News Service

WSU Prof Teams With NASA, Dutch on Pollution-Monitoring Satellite

PULLMAN, Wash. -- With the anticipated July 10 launch of NASA's Earth Observing System Aura satellite, environmental scientists here and across the globe are expecting to get the clearest space-based views yet of the sources and movement of air pollution in the earth's lower atmosphere.

The spacecraft will carry into orbit a complex package of four high-tech instruments to conduct a wide range of studies of both the upper and lower atmospheres. Among them will be a device called the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, or OMI (pronounced oh¡ä-mee by project scientists).

Although proposed, constructed and funded largely by the Dutch, OMI utilizes extensive U.S. expertise in ozone-measuring instrumentation and analysis. With funding from NASA, Washington State University's George Mount, a geophysicist and professor of civil and environmental engineering, has lent his expertise and effort to the project since the early stages of its development nearly eight years ago.

Producing the most advanced spatial resolution available to date, OMI (in conjunction with the other 3 instruments on Aura) is expected to provide the most scientifically useful satellite-gathered data available on the formation and dispersion of weather-borne pollutants within the planet's troposphere -- the near-earth region of the atmosphere extending from the planet's surface to an altitude of about 14 kilometers. Much of that data will be gathered from within the very lowest atmosphere in which most of the pollution chemistry occurs.

Click for complete story from WSU News Service.

Related News

• Research Improves Detection of Harmful Pathogens

  PULLMAN, Wash. -- A group of Washington State University researchers have developed a method that greatly improves and speeds up the detection of harmful pathogens in the environment. In a paper published this month in the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, the researchers, including Prashanta Dutta, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and colleagues from the University of Akron, present an improved and more effective Coulter device, used for the detection of the tiny microbes.

• WSU Researcher Finds Population, Consumption Drive Global Climate Change and Environmental Degradation

  PULLMAN, Wash. – A new study by a Washington State University researcher and his colleagues pinpoints the causes of a recent finding by a working group of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change that global climate warming is due to human activities.

• Study Shows Common Particles in Groundwater Help Plutonium Spread from Waste Sites

  PULLMAN, Wash. – Efforts to design nuclear waste facilities should take into account the tendency of plutonium to attach itself to tiny particles called colloids that are suspended in the groundwater, according to a new study by an international research team that included Washington State University chemist Sue Clark and scientists from Moscow (Russia) State University, the University of Michigan and Cameca in France.

• WSU Study Shows Environmental Toxins Can Cause Inherited Diseases

  A disease you are suffering today could be a result of your great-grandmother being exposed to an environmental toxin during pregnancy – and you may already have passed it along to your children. That’s the conclusion reached by researchers at Washington State University, who have found that exposure to an environmental toxin during embryonic development can cause an animal, and almost all of its descendents, to develop adult-onset illnesses such as cancer and kidney disease.

• Centering the Environmental Community

  CEREO is born. After a two-year gestation, the Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach was approved by the Faculty Senate in April.

• Where Does All of That Rain Water Go?

  TACOMA, Wash. -- Where is all of the rain water of the past several weeks ending up, and more importantly to WSU Extension educator Curtis Hinman, how is it getting to its final destination?

• Virgin Palouse Prairie May Serve As Native Insect Refuge

  A 30-plus-acre slope near here may be one of the last, best chances to understand the insect world of the pre-agriculture Palouse Prairie, according to Richard Zack, a Washington State University professor of entomology. He and graduate student Jessica Thompson of Chico, Calif., are conducting research on the plot this summer to determine how the insect population – especially the moth population–-there differs from the insect population in surrounding agricultural areas.

• Tackling Megacity Crud

  Researchers at Washington State University’s Laboratory of Atmospheric Research are working with a group of more than 20 universities and government agencies who are using Mexico City as a case study in how to tackle the huge problem of air quality in megacities.

• WSU Researcher Sees No Technological ‘Fix’ to Earth’s Environmental Woes

  Technology alone isn’t likely to rescue our planet from the detrimental environmental impacts of industrialization and other human activities, according to a WSU researcher and leader in developing a way to scientifically model and assess human-environment interactions.

• Seeing pollution from a higher vantage

  Imagine trying to measure a needle in a haystack from an overflying airplane. That’s similar to the task researchers in the Laboratory for Atmospheric Research (LAR) at Washington State University are hoping to accomplish with new instrumentation to measure precise levels of ground-level air pollution.

• New Zealand Mud Snails

  New Zealand mud snails, which can reach population densities greater than 300,000 per square meter, have invaded the Snake River, Yellowstone National Park, and lots of other sites in the western U.S., including areas where endangered U.S. snails live. Under the direction of thesis advisor Mark Dybdahl, graduate student Alison Emblidge Fromme traveled to New Zealand in search of clues to the control of this invasive species.

• Extreme Diversity

  At Washington's Soap Lake, WSU researcher Brent Peyton is learning about tiny microorganisms that could be key to solving 21st-century problems in areas from pharmaceuticals to environmental cleanup.

• Mount St. Helens: The Perfect Laboratory

  John Bishop, an ecologist at Washington State University Vancouver, studies the recovery of lupines on the pumice plain at Mount St. Helens.

Research News and Features, PO Box 641040, Washington State University 99164-0932, 509-335-3581, Contact Us