(92j) Determination of Spatial Correlations for Volatile Organic Compounds in the Pennsylvanian Atmosphere

This study investigated the spatial pattern of four atmospheric chemical compounds, throughout the Pennsylvanian region, whose abundance is greatly influenced by human activity. We hypothesized that compounds with longer lifetimes would have greater spatial correlations than compounds with shorter lifetimes. Answering this question is important from the perspective of designing monitoring systems as well as plans for source reduction. The chemicals, carbon-tetrachloride, acetone, toluene and propene each have distinct atmospheric lifetimes governed by removal reactions. We determined the correlation of chemical densities among eight geographically distinct sites and related the distance between sites to their correlation coefficients. Correlations for carbon-tetrachloride and propene did not change with increased distance between monitoring sites. Acetone and Toluene revealed decreased correlation with increased distance between monitoring sites. Thus for chemicals with low lifetimes and high reactivity, monitoring density is crucial to obtain accurate chemical levels.