Monitoring and Visualization of Tropospheric Ozone in Rural/Semi Rural Sites of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan

Ozone is one of the most pervasive of the global air pollutants, with impacts on human health, food production and the environment. Present research highlights emphasized the main rural agricultural areas of Rawalpindi and Islamabad for their air quality assessment and visualization in order to evaluate and predict the risk areas to facilitate farmers and policy makers to draft critical guidelines for possible threat of ozone concentrations to the agricultural sector of country in the coming years. Model 400E ozone analyzer was used to determine the ozone concentration. Results indicated the seasonal fluctuation in O3 concentration levels. Mean concentration value of O3 in Rawalpindi and Islamabad is 35 ppb. Climatologically parameters also showed significant association with ozone concentration. Comparison of obtained values of ozone with the WHO standards indicates that O3 levels are still lower than standards. This indicates that we still have a time to reconsider our anthropogenic activities to control the O3 precursors to prevent any deleterious effects on agricultural sector.