Air Quality Monitoring in the Arctic Network National Parklands

Wald, Eric

Despite the pristine appearance of the arctic parklands, the steady input of contaminants from both local and global sources make pollution a primary concern in ARCN. Sources of contaminants in ARCN’s parklands include point sources, regional sources, trans-pacific and trans-polar global pollution sources. Point sources include heavy metals, sulfur and nitrogen from the Red Dog Mine, the largest zinc and lead mine in the world. Regional sources include those associated with northwest Alaskan community and industrial development. The furthest-range pollutants are semi-volatile organic compounds (SOC’s) including persistent organic pollutants (POP’s), mercury, sulfur and nitrogen from Asian (and even eastern North American) sources. There are myriad potential biological consequences from these various pollutants on ARCN resources. ARCN ecologists have recently focused studies on the effects of heavy metals on ecosystem components in CAKR (e.g., impairment of lichen and bryophyte communities, bioaccumulation in fauna, contaminant levels in forage, increasing bioavailability with weathering). Bioaccumulation of mercury in piscivorous freshwater fish has begun to receive some attention from the perspective of human health, though food-chain effects for wildlife are relatively unknown. The effects of sulfur and nitrogen on vegetation are well known generally, but are relatively unknown in Alaska. Wet and dry deposition is of concern to park management for a number of reasons. First, increasing loads of sulfur and nitrogen from Asian coal-burning has the potential to seriously degrade tundra and alpine vegetation and boreal forest epiphytes. These vegetation communities are dominated by nonvascular plant species (i.e., lichens and mosses) that are highly sensitive to these pollutants. Bioaccumulation of heavy metals including mercury and organic toxins is another key concern from the perspectives of food chain health and subsistence hunting. A recent study that included two lakes within the ARCN found that mercury levels in older, piscivorous fish already exceeds EPA guidelines for human health in some cases (Western Airborne Contaminant Assessment Program: WACAP 2008). Thus far, semi-volatile organic compounds (SOC’s) including pesticides, do not appear to be concentrating in arctic Alaska’s foodchain (WACAP 2008). However, increasing use of toxic SOC’s in Asia is likely to increase deposition levels in Alaska in the future. Re-measurement of baseline values would therefore be of keen interest.

Air Quality Monitoring in the Arctic Network National Parklands

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