June 14, 2024

Summer 2024 Newsletter

The purpose of our mid-year newsletter is to inform stakeholders about our team's recent work and accomplishments.  We produce an annual report in November of each year that comprehensively documents our research results, funding, and plans for the coming year.  This newsletter provides a preview to the upcoming annual report and a less formal look at our team's goings-on.  The purpose of all this is to get you involved in our work.  If you have questions or suggestions, please reach out!

Kenzy with Pods

Team News

Ozone low during winter 2023-24; Regulators on track to bring Uinta Basin in attainment of federal standards

John Lawson and Seth Lyman
Winter 2023-24 had zero days with ozone exceeding the EPA standard of 70 ppb. There were some heavy snow events, but air temperatures were too high to support a snowpack after the heavy snowfall. One snowfall did lead to a weak inversion (where cold air begins to stagnate at the Basin floor, trapping pollution), but the snow melted before ozone levels built substantially. Snowfall and seasonal snowpack were substantial along both the Wasatch and Uinta mountain ranges. Locals in the Basin noticed the contrast between the last two winters (see Figure); winter 2022-23 had snow cover across the entire Basin for months, leading to many inversion days and high ozone, in comparison to last winter with zero days of ozone.

Ozone remained low for the three winters prior to 2022-23, and the EPA has used those three years of data as justification for a proposed rule that would bring the Uinta Basin into official regulatory attainment of the federal ozone standard.  This complicated regulatory process is just beginning, but it has the potential to save our region’s economy hundreds of millions of dollars in noncompliance costs.  EPA cited the Bingham Center’s ozone alert program as a prominent example of actions being taken that influenced its decision to bring the Basin into ozone attainment.  The high ozone in winter 2022-23 shows that more work is still needed to reduce the pollution that causes winter ozone, but we are moving in the right direction!
histogramSatellite images of the Uinta Basin from February 2023 and February 2024, showing the difference in snow cover across the two years.  Images taken from https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/.

Improving forecasts of winter ozone

John Lawson

figOne of our focuses in 2024 is building an AI-driven model (“Clyfar”, Welsh for “clever”) which takes weather forecasts and generates ozone-concentration predictions, having learned from years of weather and ozone observations around the Basin. For instance, we know that heavy snowfall and increasing atmospheric pressure typically leads to high ozone. We can create rules like this for the AI system to use and improve as we continue testing. 

We aim to host a website by the end of 2024, where users can access our Ozone Alert forecasts in a new manner. This website will be updated as we create better ways to communicate the risk of high-ozone episodes. 

One aspect of our forecasting work is exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in generating forecasts.  Some readers will be familiar with AI chatbots such as OpenAI ChatGPT and Anthropic Claude, where users can give the AI a command and receive a generated response that performs the relevant tasks.  Not just useful for creating whimsical poems and images, AI chatbots are very useful for scientific research and act as “co-pilots.” Some AI chatbots can also interpret images, which led us to ask: is there potential to give the AI chatbot weather maps and asking for a forecast? 

We found that a recent version of ChatGPT showed both fantastic promise and risks of incorrect or useless statements. We asked for forecasts in both English and Spanish to gauge its ability to communicate weather risks to different communities. While the English response was adequate, unfortunately the Spanish translation was poor, which may be related to AI learning from material that was mostly in English. The work will support further investigation into improving our team’s communication of environmental hazards. The study was recently submitted to Artificial Intelligence for Earth Systems and is available free of charge in preprint form on arXiv.  

New project to analyze aerial methane survey data 

Seth Lyman
Methane mapping LiDAR instruments deployed from aircraft can detect methane emission plumes from oil and natural gas infrastructure. This instrumentation provides high-resolution, two-dimensional maps of methane that identify the origin, shape, and structure of emission plumes. Commercial methane mapping technologies can detect leaks of just a few kg/hr, allowing oil and gas companies to visualize and quantify significant methane emission sources across broad areas of development. Companies use this information to prioritize upgrades and repairs that reduce emissions.

We are collaborating with companies to analyze their aerial survey data to determine trends in emissions across the Basin, including understanding emissions categorized by equipment and facility type and how emissions change over time. While aerial mapping datasets are only available for methane, we will use multi-pollutant emissions datasets collected by our group and others in the Uinta Basin to extrapolate non-methane organics and nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions from various source types based on known methane emission ratios.  We will produce a public report and anonymized dataset that detail our work and findings. With industry input, we will also create a public website containing emissions information for the Uinta Basin. The website's purpose will be to provide generalized data about emission sources so industry and other stakeholders can have easy access to information that helps them prioritize emissions-reduction activities. 
marcfig
Example photo of an aerial methane emissions survey.  From www.bridgerphotonics.com.

New facilities and equipment

Trevor O'Neil

Thanks to generous support from the Utah Legislature, Uintah Special Service District 1, the Utah Division of Air Quality (UDAQ), and the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, the Bingham Research Center is upgrading some of its air quality monitoring stations and field and lab equipment to enhance the accuracy and reliability of their environmental data.

One notable new piece of equipment is a Teledyne API N500 True NO2 Analyzer at the Roosevelt monitoring station. This analyzer provides precise measurements of NOX levels in the atmosphere, which is a crucial component of ozone-forming air pollution. A new field calibrator system has also been added.  In addition to these equipment enhancements, there have been significant upgrades to the buildings housing these instruments. The Center has moved into a new building at the Roosevelt site provided by UDAQ, and the Bingham Research Center purchased the old building and installed it at the Center's Castle Peak site, replacing a shed that previously housed the monitoring station.

Also, the Bingham Center received a $50,000 gift from the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation to purchase a new gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer (GC/MS).  The Center uses a GC/MS to analyze hundreds of whole-air canister samples every year to determine concentrations of organic compounds in ambient air and from pollution sources, and the current instrument is almost two decades old and facing obsolescence.  The Foundation's gift, along with funds from the Utah Legislature, are allowing us to purchase a new GC/MS so we can continue with those measurements.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of these partners for their support of our work.
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Assessing wildfire reclamation success using drone-based imagery

Colleen Jones
duchanWe are engaged in a project to assess recovery from wildfires using drone-based spectrometric techniques. Wildfires significantly alter vegetation composition, soil stability, and water quality, as well as create substantial economic and social impacts. In 2023, the Department of Interior received $2.1 billion for fire preparedness, suppression, fuels management, and wildlife adjustment. Part of the funding goes toward post-fire restoration. The major focus of post-fire restoration has typically been to reduce erosion by re-seeding to restore plant cover, but re-seeding is often unsuccessful, and monitoring of restoration projects is expensive and labor-intensive. The Bingham Research Center, in conjunction
with the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative, Bureau of Land Management, and other partners, is collaborating on a project to use drone-based remote sensing to improve the ability to assess the success of restoration efforts.

The use of remote sensing in post-fires is more time and cost-efficient. Using remote sensing and spectral analysis can help understand the impacts of wildfires on vegetation, but also monitor the return of vegetation to the landscape after wildfires. Remote sensing has been used in post-fire monitoring, but also for ascertaining burn severity, current fire activity, fire risk assessments, and potential fuel quantities for fires. The Bingham Center's current project involves collection of aerial multispectral imagery with a fixed-wing drone, sampling vegetation along transects, and collecting and analyzing soil samples to assess watershed-scale impacts of wildfire management practices.  The vegetation and soil samples are used to train a machine learning model to use aerial imagery to quickly assess vegetation types and soil cover across a large area.

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