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Cascadia AirNET was a project of RE Sources, with collaboration by The Northwest Air Pollution Authority (NWAPA) and the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). The geographic location of this project was the tri-county region of Northwest Washington that is the jurisdiction area for NWAPA: Island, Skagit, and Whatcom counties; and the Fraser River Valley in B.C. which is in the jurisdiction of the GVRD for air quality issues. Generally, the area from the Skagit River in the South to the Fraser River in the North is known as the "Cascadia Bioregion". This bioregion shares resources that don’t respect political boundaries, including air. Thus the name "Cascadia AirNET". Please see the "Project Evaluation" above for geographic spread of the participating schools and lichen studies.
Air quality in this bioregion has been declining steadily according to ongoing monitoring by NWAPA and GVRD. Even when a specific pollutant is recorded as declining per capita (lead in Washington and particulates in Vancouver), the steady rise in population for this region is beginning to take serious toll on air quality in many population centers, as well as in the prized wilderness downwind from those metropolitan centers. Acid precipitation in the wilderness area around Hope, B.C. is endangering the Crown Forest land there, and whole lake systems are dying from the same problem in the North Cascades National Forest land in Washington. Air quality issues are rarely treated in depth in area schools and there are no real-life opportunities for students on either side of the border to learn about these issues in a trans-border context. We have found no other programs for conducting school-based environmental education programs in a cross-border context. Also, opportunities are few for students to share their learning with peers in other communities across the border. These are the problems which motivated Cascadia AirNET and to which the program addressed itself this year.
Cascadia AirNET was organized to address these problems through a variety of approaches. First, air quality issues on both sides of the border were researched in-depth and the collaborating organizations were coordinated to contribute. Props and hand-out materials appropriate to both sides of the border were developed and presentations were created. Teachers were trained in the use of the curricula and field research protocols, as well as networked via email with one another to share supporting materials that they developed. The protocol was field-tested for different mini-ecosystems within the bioregion and a standard protocol was developed that worked for all. Classes were conducted and students did the lichen research. The PAX Analyzer was used by students and teachers to chemically analyze the air in their study zone. The results of the PAX analysis were generated as a text report and compared item-by-item with standards for each parameter, then the results were graphed and emailed to the class doing the research. The reports and graphs were copied as transparencies for use in the follow-up presentation and for comparison purposes during presentations to other schools. The lichen data was quality-assured through “ground-truthing” by trained staff. The internet interactive database was developed and deployed, although too late for any students to enter their own research data. The data entry is being completed by volunteers at the time of this writing. It is available in its incomplete form at the url http://airnet.openaccess.org
Evaluations by participants were compiled and analyzed. Continued funding is being sought to help dedicated teachers continue the program and to address the growing requests from other teachers who want to participate. The whole program is being replicated by The Southwest Air Pollution Control Authority in Washington, and the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Network in Canada.
Outcomes of Cascadia AirNET are the revised Teacher's Manual, a list of local target lichen species to focus on in this bioregion for air quality studies, a dichotomous key to identify local target lichen species, new study protocol appropriate to citizen monitoring at the secondary school level, a database of air quality educators in this bioregion, a database of lichen studies conducted this year by participating students (in progress), trained teachers throughout the region networked together for mutual support, supporting curriculum developed by teachers as they implemented Cascadia AirNET this year, and cooperation between air quality regulatory agencies on each side of the border as well as among academics in the field in both countries.
RE Sources for Sustainable Communities
Bellingham, Washington, United States
http://www.re-sources.org
For more information about this grant, please contact the CEC Secretariat.
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