Once all new sites sampling, this will bring total number of active SPARTAN sites to 30!
The Surface Particulate Matter Network is excited to be adding ten new sites in the first half of 2022. New sites continue to fill in important sampling gaps in Africa - adding sites in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Johannesburg, South Africa and Bujumbura, Burundi- continue to fill out compositional information in the US, adding a site run by network partners AirPhoton and JPL in Baltimore, Maryland and Pasadena California respectively as well as gaining information in Oklahoma, where a new site will be introduced at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Additionally, we will expand the network in Israel, India and East Asia, adding a site in Haifa, Israel, Delhi, India as well as one in both Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan. We have also welcomed our first site Australian site, in Melbourne.
New SPARTAN site set up and ready to start sampling in Melbourne, Australia
As always at SPARTAN sites, we are very grateful to be partnering with local institutions, site principal investigators and site operators - who manage the site day to day. For our new sites, we are working with partners at the University of Melbourne, Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Kaohsiung Medical University, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Jet Propulsion Lab, AirPhoton LLC and University of Johannesburg.
Seven of the new sites are part of the MAIA project, and two of the existing SPARTAN sites -Rehovot, Israel and Pretoria, South Africa- have transitioned to the MAIA sampling protocol as well. The MAIA mission will combine satellite data for Primary Target Areas around the world, which will be paired with ground monitors and local epidemiological data for target cities.
View from the SPARTAN site in Taipei, where at time of publication the fifth cartridge at this site is sampling. With the shorter sampling interval used for the MAIA project, data will come in more quickly for our MAIA sites