Street Scale Air Pollution Modelling in Antalya on Mediterranean Coast of Turkey

Antalya is a city at the Turkish Riviera located on Mediterranean coast of southwestern Turkey and it is the fifth populated city in Turkey. The city has a downtown population of over 2 million. Agriculture and tourism activities are the most important sources of income in the region. Antalya is a very important tourism destination and welcomes more than 10 million tourists every year.

Nowadays, with the rapid increase in urbanization, air pollution has been one of the most important environmental problems especially in big cities. In order to solve the pollution problems as soon as possible, the largest air pollution sources must be determined first. Air quality models are used extensively in air quality studies as they allow these problems to be identified quickly, cheaply and effectively. The semi-parameterized Operational Street Pollution Model (OSPM^®) has been widely used around the globe to determine levels of air pollution on local or street-scale for urban street canyons (Berkowicz 2000, Ketzel et al. 2012).

For this study; four street canyons along the main roads in central Antalya were selected (100. Yıl Avenue, Yener Ulusoy Avenue, Adnan Menderes Avenue, Kızılırmak Street).  Modeling has been carried out for a period of one year (July 2014 – July 2015) for the pollutants PM2.5 and PM2.5-10.

The urban background concentrations for particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM2.5-10) were collected using stack filter unit system. Total of 169 samples were collected once in a two-day period between July 2014 and July 2015 (Tepe 2016). Meteorological parameters and traffic data used in this study were obtained from Turkish State Meteorological Service and Turkish Statistical Institute, respectively.

REFERENCES

Berkowicz, R. OSPM - A Parameterised Street Pollution Model. Environ. Monit. Assess. 65, 323 331 (2000)

Ketzel M, Jensen SS, Brandt J, Ellermann T, Olesen HR, Berkowicz R and Hertel O. Evaluation of the Street Pollution Model OSPM for Measurements at 12 Streets Stations Using a Newly Developed and Freely Available Evaluation Tool. J Civil Environ Eng, S1:004 (2012)

Tepe, A. Investigation of Concentrations and Source Apportionment of Metals Attached to PM2.5 and PM10 in Antalya Ambient Air (Unpublished master’s thesis). Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey (2016)