|  Air
pollutants do not recognize park, state, or other man-made
borders. To protect park resources and predict effects of
air pollutants on natural resources in the National Capital
Region, the Air Resources Program at the Center for Urban
Ecology coordinates with national-scale air quality monitoring
programs both within and outside the National Park Service.
These include:
- Interagency Monitoring of Protected
Visual Environments (IMPROVE)
- Clean Air Status and Trends Network
(CASTNET)
- National Atmospheric Deposition
Program (NADP)
Ecological effects of air pollutants:
Air pollutants do not just make the
air murky and unhealthy to breathe, they also can harm ecosystems
by acidifying and eutrophying both soils and water bodies
(via nitrogen and sulfur deposition), by damaging and retarding
growth in plants (via ozone deposition), and even by poisoning
fish and the organisms that feed on them (via mercury deposition).
Federal Land Managers, including the Park Service, quantify
these effects using a suite of measurable Air Quality Related
Values (AQRVs).
The air resource, water, vegetation, wildlife managers at
CUE work together as an interdisciplinary team to develop
these quantitative measures for Parks in the National Capital
Region, and to use the for monitoring long term trends.
Other Federal Land Managers in Air
Resources:
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