[music] DD: Air quality, as is water quality, is one
of the foundations of all life. All the vegetation, the trees, the birds, the bats, the insects,
the deer, the bear - all of the living things really depend on the quality of the air. So,
it's really important for us to understand what impacts the air that is being breathed
by all living things have on their health, including our human health, our visitors and
our staff. Devils Postpile is located in the Central
Sierra, so I often think of it as the heart of the Sierras. We are about midway between
Yosemite and Sequoia Kings Canyon. We're really fortunate to have a partnership
with the Pacific Southwest Research Station, which is the research arm of the U.S. Forest
Service, Department of Agriculture. And this collaborative partnership actually started
about five years ago when we recognized that we're in a location in the Sierra Nevada that's
affected by a lot of the air movements that are coming from the west side of course, but
also coming up the drainage of the upper middle fork of the San Joaquin River.
AB: In our 2007 and 2008 research, we found that the highest air pollution in this area
is when the air pollution masses are coming from the San Francisco and Sacramento areas
and they sweep down the Central California Valley and then get into Sierra through the
San Joaquin River drainage. Our past studies show that there are some
days when air pollution is affecting this area and we have exceedances of ozone concentrations.
Exceedance of the air pollutant standard, primary air pollution standard, it means that
it potentially may affect the health of people. We are very concerned about all the visitors
and staff in the Devils Postpile National Monument.
This year's study is, kind of a continuation of that effort but with the main objective
of looking at the effects of local pollution from the shuttle buses on air quality and
what we could do as the Forest Service and the National Park Service in regard to protecting
air quality in the area and propose some measures which would keep this very important national
monument clean from the point of view of air, and also safe to people from the point of
view of preventing them from inhaling excessive amounts of air pollutants.
We use passive samplers which are measuring concentrations of ozone, nitrogen oxides,
ammonia and nitric acid. This instrument, which is operated by colleagues from UC Merced
and Forest Service Management Branch, is called E-BAM and measures concentrations of particulate
matter. So, particulates smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, which are very toxic
to people, and particulate matter which are smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter, so-called
PM 10 which is also a criteria pollutant. This information will be used to tell the
public and tell the land and air quality managers what air quality we have on this particular
side of the Devils Postpile National Monument. It will tell the managers of the monument
what levels of pollution they have, if the level of pollution is high enough to be concerned
about public health. So far, we have data on ozone and nitrogen
oxide. So far, it means that from the beginning of June until mid-July, concentrations of
the two categories of pollutants are not very high, but we'll be continuing our research
until the end of September so we have information from the whole season in order to tell what
air quality in this particular place of the national monument during the whole season
when there are many tourists and visitors coming to the park.
DD: We also realize in addition to air pollution that we also have some other changes that
we need to be monitoring. With the climate changing and unfolding and rapidly progressing
perhaps in sensitive areas like this, it's going to be really important to understand
what changes are occurring so we can figure out where the mitigations are that we can
take as a National Park Service and as a society to protect these precious places.
As managers, what type of adaptation strategies that we would need to implement on the land.
So the partnership between the U.S. Forest Service, the Pacific Southwest Research Station,
the National Park Service and our academic partners is really critical for us to sustain
these beautiful places for both all living things here and now, and future generations.
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