Analysis of pollutants in air within the territory of Ukraine using geostatistical methods

Abstract

Air quality has recently been of great concern, as it directly affects people's lives. Continuous monitoring of atmospheric air quality and forecasting the dynamics of its changes are essential steps in assessing its current state and determining the concentration of pollutants. Therefore, the development of an effective system for assessing and forecasting the quality of atmospheric air has become one of the most important tasks. The subject matter of this article is geostatistical methods for air quality analysis. The goal is to analyze pollutants in the air over Ukraine's territory from 1990 to 2021. The dataset on air pollutants was provided by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine in the form of aggregated tables, which were initially processed for subsequent modelling. Cartographic modelling of pollutants was performed using geostatistical methods. As a result, this study presents 13 cartographic models showing the spatial distribution of air pollutants for different regions of Ukraine. However, because of the lack of official information on the presence of military actions, the results of geostatistical methods cannot be interpreted in the context of the military situation in the eastern part of the country. Information about military actions can be gathered from various sources, but this would require a considerable time and effort to structure and systematize the dataset. Conclusions. The method considered in this study cannot simultaneously consider multiple parameters, such as the value of pollutant indicators and the presence of military actions. Additional methods, such as graph theory and regression analysis, are employed to obtain quantitative assessments of the modelling results considering all factors influencing the environmental condition. The chosen method is a straightforward tool for solving environmental problems. Thanks to available GIS systems like ArcGIS Pro, visualization of the applied geostatistical and mathematical methods is possible. The cartographic models presented in this study cover the entire territory of Ukraine and have administrative boundaries depending on the location of the pollutant collection station.