In April 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey began a study to determine the occurrence and temporal distribution of 49 pesticides and pesticide metabolites in air and rain samples from an urban and an agricultural sampling site in Mississippi. The study was a joint effort between the National WaterQuality Assessment and the Toxics Substances Programs and was part of a larger study examining the oc...

Urban montane valleys are often characterized by periodic wintertime temperature inversions (cold air pools) that increase atmospheric particulate matter concentrations, potentially stimulating the deposition of major ions to these snow-covered ecosystems. We assessed spatial and temporal patterns of ion concentrations in snow across urban to montane gradients in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, and ...

Mounting research highlights the contribution of ecosystem services provided by urban forests to quality of life in cities, yet these services are rarely explicitly considered in environmental policy targets. We quantify regulating services provided by urban forests and evaluate their contribution to comply with policy targets of air quality and climate change mitigation in the municipality of ...

Understanding the causes of the intra-urban air temperature variability is a first step in improving urban landscape design to ameliorate urban thermal environment. Here we investigated the spatial and temporal variations of air temperature at a local scale in Beijing, and their relationships with three categories of landscape design parameters, including the land cover features, site geometry,...

Managing vegetation in urban environments requires an understanding of its structure, atmospheric interactions and function. This has led to quantification and development of models to estimate the functions of urban vegetation, particularly the integrated effects that take place between vegetation and local atmospheres. The Urban FORest Effects (UFORE) model (developed in North America by the ...

background : china has become an aging society, and the mental health problem of the elderly is increasingly becom-ing prominent. this paper aimed to analyze the effect of air pollution and rural-urban difference on mental health of the elderly in china. methods : using the data from the china health and retirement longitudinal survey (charls, 2013), after control-ling the social demography var...

life style and life expectancy of inhabitants have been affected by the increase of particulate matter 10 micrometers or less in diameter (pm10) in cities and this is why maximum pm10 concentrations have received extensive attention. an early notice system for pm10 concentrations necessitates an accurate forecasting of the pollutant. in the current study an artificial neural network was used t...

Global climate change increases heat loads in urban areas causing health and productivity risks for millions of people. Inhabitants in tropical and subtropical urban areas are at especial risk due to high population density, already high temperatures, and temperature increases due to climate change. Air conditioning is growing rapidly, especially in South and South-East Asia due to income growt...

The incidence of allergic respiratory diseases and bronchial asthma appears to be increasing worldwide, and people living in urban areas more frequently experience these conditions than those living in rural areas. One of the several causes of the rise in morbidity associated with allergic respiratory diseases is the increased presence of outdoor air pollutants resulting from more intense energ...

Extreme heat is a leading cause of weather-related human mortality. The urban heat island (UHI) can magnify heat exposure in metropolitan areas. This study investigates the ability of a new MODIS-retrieved near-surface air temperature and humidity dataset to depict urban heat patterns over metropolitan Chicago, Illinois, during June–August 2003–13 under clear-sky conditions. A self-organizing m...