The purposes of this project are to setup the PM supersites in southern Taiwan, to audit the operation/maintenance of supersites, to evaluate the impact of traditional festival on air quality, and compare different measurement instruments by parallel samplings. The PM supersites including four measurement locations have been setup and run in southern Taiwan. The measured items include three categories: size distribution and chemical compositions of particle, precursors of particle formation, and products of photochemical reactions, to study the sources and formation pathways for the ambient particles. The records of operation/maintenance include entrance to site, routine operation/maintenance, and measurements for abnormal. Therefore, the performance of each instrument can be traced. In order for each instrument to be operated normally, the operation percentage should be for each instrument instead of the average of all instruments at each sites. The ambient air pollutant concentrations increases significantly during the traditional festivals and the increments are greater than twice with the PM1 hourly concentrations greater than 1000 um/m3 sometimes. The sources during festivals include both the incense and fireworks burnings and mobile sources. Submircron particle concentrations increases more significantly for Yuanshone festival because the major sources are incense burnings and fireworks; there are more increments for supermicron particle for Dachun because of the traffic flow. The measurement results are highly correlated among the different instruments for parallel samplings; but, there are systematic differences for concentrations due to the different measurement methods. The size distributions measured by Grimm 1.108 are underestimated by at least 15% due to the effects of long sampling inlet.

PM supersite, traditional festival, parallel samplings