REMOTE SENSING OF PARTICULATE MATTER AND AEROSOLS: SCIENTOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Air pollution by particulate matter (PM) has been a global concern for years, involving a comprehensive field of scientific research and which, more recently, has come to include approaches using remote sensing. Seeking to obtain an overview of this field and identify its main characteristics and trends, this work made a bibliometric analysis on this theme, considering the global and national context, for the latter, a systematic review was carried out. From the manipulation of Scopus data, 1,043 publications were identified between 2001 and 2021, being the focus of the analyses conducted in this work only the 732 article-type documents. The results showed that there are few discussions on the remote sensing of PM and aerosols. The main methodologies described were (1) the production of primary data through techniques such as Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), (2) the use of sensors (e.g. MODIS, TERRA, LIDAR) and (3) the recovery of secondary data (e.g. CETESB and SISAM). In Brazil, only nine documents address this theme, highlighting their multidisciplinary character: human health, learning, environmental impacts, and air quality monitoring. Although there has been an increase in scientific production in this theme, further studies are still needed to deepen the concepts and applications of remote sensing in this context.