Event
Environmental Engineering Seminar: Lisa Rodenburg
Monday, December 7, 2015
2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.
1173 Glenn L. Martin Hall (CEE Conference Room)
Dr. Birthe Kjellerup
bvk@umd.edu
Dr. Lisa Rodenburg
Department of Environmental Sciences
Rutgers University
Environmental Data Mining: How to do research with no money
As in all other branches of science, environmental science is experiencing a data explosion. This presentation will show examples of ways in which these new, free, publicly available data sets can be used to answer questions about the sources of environmental contamination and the fate of the contaminants. One tool we have used is Positive Matrix Factorization, which has emerged as a popular tool for source apportionment of contaminants and can be downloaded for free from EPA. Although originally applied to atmospheric pollutants such as PM2.5, its use has expanded. We have used PMF to investigate congener patterns of persistent organic pollutants in air, water, and sediment. POPs we have investigated include Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins and –furans (PCDD/Fs) and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs). This approach has allowed source apportionment across different formulations (such as Aroclors) and has identified processes (microbial dehalogenation) and non-Aroclor PCBs sources (such as pigments). This presentation will describe some of the main challenges of applying PMF and other data mining techniques to a variety of data sets.
