Poster Presentation

Using a High Altitude Balloon Platform to Measure Seasonal Ozone Flux over Agricultural Landscapes

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Abstract

The concentration of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the atmosphere has continued to rise since the industrial era. This issue has had a multitude of negative impacts on all living things. Among the major GHGs are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Ozone is of particular importance because it not only has the ability to trap heat in the atmosphere, but it also directly impacts organisms by causing harm to both plants and humans. The damage that ozone causes to plants is most closely linked to ozone uptake rather than ozone concentration. So, measuring ozone uptake is becoming critical for agronomists. Two common methods that are currently used for testing ozone uptake are using satellites and flux chambers. However, these methods each have various flaws. Testing ozone uptake with satellites is extremely expensive and difficult to maintain. Using flux chambers will only work on a very small scale and the results are actually an estimation based on stomatal conductance. The aim of this study is to use a high altitude balloon platform to directly measure ozone uptake. Recent studies by DePaul University students have shown that high-altitude balloons are an adequate method for documenting carbon dioxide flux in southern Illinois (Pocs 2014). The high altitude balloon is cheap, quick, and can document carbon dioxide concentration over large spatial areas. While these studies have shown how the balloon could work to document carbon dioxide flux, no such high altitude balloon studies have been performed to record ozone flux. My study will bridge this gap in knowledge. I hypothesize that the balloon platform will be successful in measuring ozone uptake. I also hypothesize that ozone uptake will vary directly with ozone concentration. In order to test these hypotheses, a balloon platform will be launched in Southern Illinois containing two GPS units and a package containing an ozone sensor and miscellaneous data recorder. This high altitude balloon platform will be launched several days throughout the Summer of 2015. Each testing day, the balloon will be launched twice with about three hours between launches. These launches will record ozone concentration, temperature, and pressure data for varying altitudes. Various equations will finally be used to calculate ozone uptake. It is expected that the balloon platform will be able to successfully measuring ozone uptake and that it will show that ozone uptake varies directly with ozone concentration. If this study is successful, it will provide a cheap and useful method for measuring ozone uptake. Since ozone damage to crops is increasingly becoming a serious issues, agronomists may find this technology useful. It can potentially help determine what the cause of decrease in crop yield is.

How to Cite:

Sabo, C., (2015) “Using a High Altitude Balloon Platform to Measure Seasonal Ozone Flux over Agricultural Landscapes”, Academic High Altitude Conference 2015(1). doi: https://doi.org//ahac.8171