Air Quality

Monitoring Objectives
Compile and analyze data from existing sources to:

• Determine the weekly, seasonal, and annual status and trends in concentrations of visibility-reducing pollutants
• Determine the weekly, seasonal, and annual status and trends in concentrations of sulfate, nitrate, nitrate, nitric acid, sulfur dioxide, ammonium, and other selected cations from wet deposition
• Determine the weekly, seasonal, and annual status and trends in ozone concentration
• Determine the weekly, seasonal, and annual status and trends in dry deposition chemistry.

Background
The National Park Service is charged with maintaining parks and their resources unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. Park resources affected by air quality include scenery and vistas, vegetation, water, and wildlife. Both the Clean Air Act and the NPS Organic Act protect air resources in national parks. Additionally, the Southeast Coast Inventory and Monitoring Network has identified several aspects of air quality as high priority vital signs for monitoring (described below).

Monitoring Approach
Data from various air quality monitoring programs will be acquired from web-based program archives and adopt existing protocols developed by the National Park Service, Air Resources Division, to the greatest extent possible. Wet deposition data are archived by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program - National Trends Network (NADP/NTN), ozone data are archived by the NPS - Air Resources Division (ARD), dry deposition data are archived by the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) and visibility data are archived by the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program.

Trend analyses will be performed whenever at least five years of comparable data are available. Analyses may include the entire period of record, as well as rolling five-year periods. Procedures include simple regression (ozone, visibility), multiple regression or other covariance techniques (wet and dry deposition with precipitation as a covariate), and appropriate between-year means comparisons (average N and S deposition, average ozone concentration, number of days with ozone exceeding 84 ppb, highest and lowest HI, etc.). Evaluation of visibility data will include discussion of compliance with Regional Haze Guidelines for Class I areas, i.e. improvement for the most impaired (20% worst) days and no degradation for the least impaired (20% best) days, from a baseline represented by 2000 to 2004. The SECN annually reports the above data summaries and (as appropriate) trend analyses in February each year. The report may be combined with reporting of other vital signs and its precise format will be determined at a future date.

Parks Where Protocol Will be Implemented
All SECN Parks

Principal Investigator
Christina Wright, Ecologist / Science Information Specialist