Air Quality Analysis in Desert Region in the Northern State of India: GIS Based Approach

Four year (2018 – 2022) measurements of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants were taken to analyse the air quality in one of the major urbanizing state Rajasthan, India. Bhiwadi, one of the major city in the state, experienced the highest pollution among 8 cities with annual particulate matter concentration of PM_2.5 (106.75 ± 59.25 µg/m³), and PM₁₀ (231.46 ± 115.45 µg/m³) in 2021 with an average increase of 16% when compared to 2020 and ranked one of the most polluted city in Asia. Alwar city, with a concentration of about 44.23 µg/m³ for PM_2.5, is the lowest received concentration among all other study areas. The particulate matter shows high correlation of about 0.5 – 0.9 in almost all the study regions throughout the study period and a good correlation was observed between CO and NO₂ ranges from 0.5 to 0.8 in Jaipur. In the entire study period, the concentration of PM_2.5 lies between 35 – 135, and 70 – 310 µg/m³ for PM₁₀ in all eight different locations. In Rajasthan, out of 8 monitoring locations, three received higher concentrations. In other locations, the concentration was about to exceed the national standards. Growing urban regions are experiencing air quality issues and few Indian cities are ranked globally for poor air quality. It is high time to mitigate the measures for air quality and the study's results determine the spatiotemporal behaviour of air pollution in growing urban regions, which helps initiate the regulatory measures for improving air quality.