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Linking Air Quality to Ecosystem Exposure
AMAD Research Programs
Linking Air Quality to Ecosystem Exposure
Ecological resources are exposed to atmospheric pollutants through wet and dry deposition processes. A long term goal of multimedia environmental management is to achieve sustainable ecological resources. Progress towards this goal rests on a foundation of science-based methods and data integrated into predictive multimedia, integrated multidisciplinary, multi-stressor open architecture modeling systems. The strategic pathway aims at progressing from addressing one stressor at a time to a comprehensive multimedia-multi stressor assessment capability for current and projected ecosystem health.
The ecosystem exposure tasks in the Atmospheric Modeling and Analysis Division (AMAD) address a number of issues that arise in multimedia modeling with an emphasis on interactions among the atmosphere and multiple other environmental media. While the watershed is a fundamental unit of ecosystem analysis, due primarily to its containment of the hydrologic cycle and related stresses, the relevant atmospheric scale of modeling and analysis for linking to watersheds is regional/continental in scope, encompassing multiple States and/or watersheds. The interaction between the atmosphere and the underlying surface is increasingly being recognized as an important factor in ecosystem exposure and pollutant transport issues. Targeted development, evaluation and application of state-of-the-art, multi-pollutant atmospheric models of ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen and mercury to multimedia issues help determine how to further improve the one-atmosphere models and support ongoing ecological assessments by providing ecosystem exposure estimates where monitoring data is not available. Model sensitivities aid in assisting in the design of the field campaign to collect measurements of parameters needed for the further development, robust model evaluation and further the understanding of the atmosphere surface interface. Software tools are needed to support linkage of models across media and specialized multimedia data analysis applications. This multimedia work helps to bring the results of air pollution control, that primarily stem from addressing human health effects, into the management purview for addressing multimedia or ecosystem problems.
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For more information please contact Robin Dennis