Dr. Emily Elliott's Research Highlighted

Dr. Elliot has recently been awarded a $400,000 grant over 3 years from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Research Initiative, Air Quality program. It is entitled, "Stable isotopes of reactive nitrogen & particulate matter: Improved tools for characterizing the transport and fate of agricultural emissions".

The summary of the project is: Reactive nitrogen emissions and particulate matter, including nitrogen oxides (NOx), ammonia (NH3), PM2.5, and PM10, are significant contributors to global water and air quality degradation - resulting in a myriad of human health and ecosystem impacts. Agricultural systems can be significant contributors to reactive nitrogen and particulate emissions; however source partitioning remains a difficult challenge. This research investigates the use of stable isotopes of NH3, NOx, PM10 and PM2.5, as additional monitoring tools for understanding the sources, transport, and fate of agricultural pollutants. Particular emphasis will be placed on characterizing nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur isotopic composition of NOx, NH3, and PM from cropland, pasture, prairie, managed forests, and livestock operations. The utility of using isotopic monitoring to track sources, transport, and fate of emissions will be evaluated using longitudinal transects near major emission sources and regional scale passive sampling. The results of this research will provide new insight into emission sources, transport and fate across landscapes, and provide new approaches to more accurately quantify regional emissions, particularly from agricultural settings.