Park-wide and Multisystem

Air quality might not be something that always feels as obvious or visible, but pollutants released into the air enter our precipitation, which then falls down into our ecosystems and the plants, animals, and water within them. Pollutants released into the air are now in this snow, which the tree is now absorbing - a process that is happening all around us all the time.

NPS / Katy Perrault

 

Many things, like air and water, span ecosystems and are monitored to inform managment of multiple different environments. Two of those things monitored by Cape Cod National Seashore scientists are air quality and hydrology, which can have both direct and indirect impacts on the other ecosystems in the park.

For example, air quality monitoring has allowed park scientists to understand how decreasing levels of harmful pollutants due to legislative restrictions have decreased the amount of acid rain deposition, leading to a positive trend in increasing pond water quality as the ponds become less acidic - Great Pond Wellfleet is 20 times less acidic than it was in the 1990's!

 

Air Quality

 

The pH scale goes from 1 (super acidic) to 14 (super basic). This graph shows the upward trend at Great Pond Wellfleet in pH from very close to the EPA definition of acid rain (which is significantly more acidic than ideal rainwater pH) to a pH that is much more tolerable by ecosystems.

NPS Image

How often do you think about the air you breathe? When we hear the term air pollution, we often think of car exhausts and factory smoke stacks coughing rolling black smoke into the air, making it difficult to breathe and smelling terrible. We also may think of hazy city skylines, with low visibility and a diffused yellow or red color. While these are well-known examples, the reality of air pollution is that it is much less visible than you might expect.

When airborne particles or aerosols, such as dust, dirt, soot, smoke, or liquid droplets travel or linger in the air, they are called particulate matter. Many of these particles are smaller than 2.5 microns in size – 30 times smaller than a strand of human hair! Particle pollution can be found everywhere, including in air that looks clean. Some particles can remain in the atmosphere for weeks, meaning that pollution generated in one region can travel thousands of miles and influence the air quality of regions far away.

Mercury can also get into the air and pollute it, emited from mining and fossil fuel combustion. Once in the air, it will eventually settle into water, or onto land where it can then be washed into water. This sequence of events is called mercury deposition. In addition to mercury, ozone is an important component of air quality. There are two types of ozone: stratospheric ozone, which is formed naturally in earth’s upper atmosphere, and tropospheric ozone, which is formed in the air we breathe in the lower atmosphere when pollutants like nitrogen oxides and other human-made chemical components interact with sunlight and heat. This reaction is heightened during the warm, sunny summer months, when the highest number of people are visiting the Seashore.

Because of their small size, these different types of air pollution can travel past our lungs and get into our bloodstream, which can then result in significant health issues, including heart attacks, asthma, reduced resistance to infection, brain damange, and birth defects. They also significantly affect plants and animals, killing fish, depleting nutrients, reducing photosynthesis (how plants make their food to stay alive), and slowing development. Particulate pollution and acid rain, for example, can cause acidification that threatens freshwater organisms and our Seashore's ecosystems, like the kettle ponds. Regulations have reduced the amount of pollutants entering the air and water, which park scientists have been able to track the positive effects of. Monitoring air quality informs monitoring in other systems, like the ponds and dune grasslands, as well as keeping tabs on the potential impacts to human and ecological health.

 

Here you can see the MA01 site and some of the instruments collecting data on air quality.

National Atmospheric Deposition Program

How this is monitored:

Air quality is monitored at two sites by the Seashore: Chatham Airport and a site of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, called MA01, in north Truro.

• Chatham: Maximum and minimum daily air temperature data is collected

• MA01: Data on levels of pH, suflates (SO₄), nitrates (NO₃), ammonium (NH₄), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), sodium (Na), chlorine (Cl), Hydrogen (H), total nitrogen (N), and mercury (Hg) are collected

The National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) is a nationwide cooperative effort among state, federal, and private organizations that records and tracks the chemistry of U.S. precipitation and its effects on human health and ecosystems, which Cape Cod National Seashore is a part of. The main goal of this program is to understand the causes and effects of acidic rain. Acid rain has negative impacts on everything it falls on, from forests and farms to bridges and buildings. Long-term atmospheric changes happen gradually, so by monitoring air quality and precipitation chemistry, the NADP and its participants, like Cape Cod National Seashore, are able to track changes and impacts. Scientists were able to see, for instance, an important reduction in the acidity of the outer Cape's rain from 1995 - 2020!

There are not any reports or publications currently available from the Seashore for air quality. You can find data collected at MA01 here.

 

Hydrology

Park scientists also monitor hydrology, which is broadly the science of water and its cycle, focusing specifically on things like groundwater and pond water levels to understand changes and influences for other systems within the park. Groundwater levels are influenced by a variety of things, including seasonality, demand by communities, and sea level rise, which makes monitoring this issue important to understanding the status and future of resources within the Seashore.

 

Written by Science Communication Scientist-in-Parks Katy Perrault and Americorp Member Sam Wilmot