Facilities + Equipment

Our research center’s location in the Voinovich Center at Ohio University provides state-of-the-art, secure lab space with constant power supply and 24-hour technical support. From hardware to software and from research tools to environmental controls, our facilities and equipment provide comprehensive, reliable data to support our research efforts.

About Our Facilities

Our center’s location in the Voinovich Center on The Ridges on Ohio University’s main Athens campus provides our researchers with geographic information systems (GIS) and database support essential to their work.

The center has three computer labs: the Environmental and Community GIS lab, the Redistricting Lab, and the Data Center Lab. Each lab houses a number of Windows XP computers along with two Windows NT servers, five Windows NT workstations, and three Dec ALPHA Digital Unix servers, as well as a variety of GIS packages (Arc/Info, Arcview, and Mapinfo). The Voinovich Center also maintains a full set of Census/TIGER GIS files (1:100,000 scale) and data from the U.S. Geological Survey (1:24,000 scale).

About Our Equipment

The Center for Air Quality maintains an array of ambient monitoring equipment:

• AMNet: Currently operate a 2537 Tekran mercury analyzer with the 1130 and 1135 speciation units for semi-continuous measurement of atmospheric mercury concentrations of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM), particulate-bound mercury (PBM), and gaseous oxidized mercury (GOM) to nanogram (ng) and picogram (pg) concentrations. Data is delivered to the USEPA and the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP).
• MDN: The Mercury Deposition Network is one of the long-running networks operated by the NADP, and the Athens Supersite has collected weekly samples of wet-deposited total mercury (THg) from March 2004 through December 2010 and resumed collection in December 2013. The system operates with a NOAH IV electronic raingage with built-in Campbell datalogger and Bluetooth capabilities for rapid and/or remote download.
• AMoN: Passive atmospheric ammonia measurements are collected on a bi-weekly basis at the Athens Supersite as part of the NADP Ammonia Monitoring Network (AMoN).
• Gas Pollutant and Particulate Monitoring: Data is collected by the Ohio EPA to provide up-to-date posting of the data on OEPA websites. Data is then transferred to the USEPA AirNow website to contribute to national mapping of air quality conditions. Gases measured at the Athens Supersite include:
  • API 100A SO2 analyzer (ppb)
  • API 200A NOx analyzer – (ppb)
  • API 360E CO2 analyzer- (ppm)
  • API 400A Ozone analyzer - (ppb)
  • API 300 CO analyzer - (ppm)  
  • API 300EU CO analyzer - (ppb)
  • API 700 Calibrator
  • API 701 Zero Air Generator
  • TEOM 1400AB PM2.5 Analyzer – Currently offline
• Meteorology: The Athens Supersite operates and maintains a standard 10m meteorological tower with a wide array of instrumentation. Data is collected by the ESC datalogger and managed the same as the gas and particulate data. Met instruments include:
  • Wind speed
  • Wind direction
  • Relative humidity
  • Solar radiation
  • Temperature sensor
  • Barometric pressure
  • Tipping raingage (heated)
  • ETI NOAH IV Digital raingage