Proportions of Change in the Airborne Particulate Matter (PM10) Concentrations Across Selected States in Peninsular India: A Study of Decadal, Pre-Pandemic Trends for Planning Restoration

Air quality in India is being continuously assessed based on the data on air quality parameters, including PM10 and PM2.5 across different air monitoring stations, which are often unevenly distributed across the geographic and political boundaries within the country. Most of these stations form a part of networks operated by the Central and State Pollution Control Boards as well as in partnerships with research institutions such as the SAFAR and MAPAN. Further, the use of complex weather models and computational steps induce methodological complexities in deriving reliable patterns of air quality changes, which provide data for critical ecosystem and/or biodiversity assessments. The present study illustrates the use of a simple methodology to model the changes in the PM10 concentrations of Peninsular India in the form proportions of changes derived from a suite of geospatially derived datasets on land-use land cover, aerosol optical depths and the planetary boundary layers, as well as new metrics such as Blue to Built-up ratios, Green to Blue ratios and percentage of impervious surface area across Peninsular India during the period 2009-2019. The present study provides a methodological approach to assess the air quality changes as inputs to plan appropriate policy interventions.