Week 1: Adventure preparation, PurpleAir installation, and a classic roadtrip

Hi there, my name is Elizabeth and I am a rising junior majoring in Chemistry and Environmental Studies. This summer Fry Intia and I are working with Dr. Deanna Donohoue on her ARTEMIS project in Indiana, Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the summer we will focus on determining the production of ozone from abandoned conventional wells, and later in the summer we will work to determine ozone production from an unconventional well that will begin new drilling. I am also working on an independent project with Dr. Donohoue using PurpleAir sensors, which are designed for environmental justice uses and provide a low-cost and accessible way to monitor particulate pollution. We will use these sensors to monitor the air quality at the farm where Dr. Donohoue has monitored air quality in the past, and we will monitor the air quality in Monessen, PA, a town which has been experiencing issues with particulate pollution from a coke factory.

At the beginning of the week, we were on the Lawrence University campus in Wisconsin working on background readings and ensuring that we were ready for the drive to Pennsylvania. I was excited to spend time engaging with the background readings because the topics are very interesting to me and I don’t have the chance to focus on these topics during the academic year. I also installed two PurpleAir sensors for the first time, one at a farm near an active frac-sand mining site, as seen to the right, and another at a nearby property able to serve as a background site. It took me a bit to figure out how to configure and register the sensors (it turned out that the Lawrence wifi was not allowing them to connect) so it was very exciting when we figured out everything we needed to install them. Over the weekend we drove from Appleton, Wisconsin to Indiana, Pennsylvania—all the while jamming out to an awesome soundtrack that we created together. Here, we have had the chance to meet people doing very interesting work at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, to work on setting up the wagon and tripod we will need for the abandoned well sampling, and to calibrate the NOx and ozone monitors.

So far it’s been such a great opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the timely topics of legacy pollution and unconventional drilling, to learn more about setting up and using atmospheric monitoring instruments, and to learn more about myself and my own interests. I’m looking forward to the upcoming

weeks and the new experiences they will hold!