Volume 2, Number 36 - Thursday, April 11, 2024
Published Mondays and Thursdays
Perspective
A RECENT OPINION PIECE in the Fresno Bee got me thinking about air pollution.
The headline was “Valley air pollution poisons two national parks. Blame our dirty habits.” You can read Marek Warszawski’s piece HERE, and I have a few excerpts below.
Information from a recent report from the National Parks Conservation Association (HERE) and a 2018 report from a study about air pollution and national park visitation published in the journal Science Advances (HERE), were included in Warszawski’s piece, as well as a quote from a 2006 Fresno Bee article in which reporter Mark Grossi wrote:
“Over this month’s first four days, the dirtiest of Central California’s dirty air settled in a place with 2,000-year-old trees and no traffic signals — Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. At the time, this mountain paradise was the only place recording smog violations in the entire San Joaquin Valley region. It wasn’t because roads were jammed with cars.”
And Warszawski continued:
There have also been numerous studies and reports … that detail how the air quality at Sequoia and Kings Canyon (specifically at its Ash Mountain park headquarters) violates federal ozone standards more frequently than Fresno or downtown Los Angeles.
I recommend you read the entire opinion piece in the Fresno Bee. There’s a paywall, but you can read it HERE if you don’t have a subscription. Phys.org and other publications have had recent articles about the NPCA report, also. Read one HERE.
Here’s how Warszawski concluded the article:
How do we put an end to this destructive cycle? Since vehicle emissions are the largest source of smog, the most direct way is to clean up our own dirty habits. That means changing the cars and trucks we drive (diesel is particularly bad) by pivoting to electric vehicles as well as enforcing stricter regulations on polluting industries.
It would also be great if some government agency, whether federal, state or local, actually cared about how air pollution produced in the Valley continues to poison our national parks. Decades of the same depressing headlines about Sequoia and Kings Canyon are proof enough that they don’t. Or at least not enough.
As I said, this article got me thinking about air pollution, and I started diving into other information easily accessible online.
Warszawski wrote about the impact on Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, but I suspect the impact is similar in Yosemite National Park and on the nearby national forests — all home to giant sequoias. (See my links below to related pages about air quality).
But I think the solution to air pollution problems in Central California — where the Fresno Bee is located and where most giant sequoias grow — is more complicated than “pivoting to electric vehicles.”
Yes, bad air from the San Joaquin Valley (and elsewhere) ends up in the mountains, and sometimes, bad air from the mountains ends up in mountain, foothill and valley communities.
California has 35 local air quality control districts. One of the largest — the San Joaquin Valley Unified air district — is responsible for valley and mountain areas of much of Central California.
Here are links to pages about air quality at the national parks in the Sierra Nevada: Yosemite National Park and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park.
Scientists provide plenty of information on these pages and elsewhere about the harmful impacts of air pollution on forests and various species that call them home.
But is air pollution the greatest risk?
That doesn’t seem to be the case.
From the Sierra Nevada Conservancy:
“Although there are many threats to biodiversity in California’s Sierra-Cascade region, large high-severity wildfire is perhaps the most urgent.”
From the San Joaquin Valley air district:
“With the fuel load in the Valley’s mountain areas at an all-time high due to the drought and the bark beetle infestation, the District is working collaboratively with land management agencies to conduct strategic controlled burns to lessen the wildfire risk. In this effort, the District is being more flexible in allowing more days for prescribed burning activities under marginal conditions, and allowing larger amounts of acres to be treated per day where localized impacts to nearby communities are not expected to occur. In addition, the District continues to advocate for additional funding for state and federal agencies to conduct additional prescribed burning and fuel reduction activities, in an effort to reduce the severity of future wildfires across the region.
Not only wildfire — but also all of those fuel reduction activities — contribute to air pollution in the Sierra Nevada and the valley below.
Complicated stuff, air pollution.
And I don’t think there are any easy answers.
Coming soon
I’ve wrapped up a road trip and will be busy this week organizing my notes for some articles related to Giant Sequoias, including an interview with Tony Edwards, the new Forest Supervisor at Sequoia National Forest, that I expect to publish Monday.
Wildfire, water & weather update
I thought we might be done with snow, but that’s not what the weather people say. Rain at lower elevations and snow at higher elevations is expected over the weekend, along with thunderstorms in some locations.
The best Sierra Nevada weather forecasts are at NWS Hanford, HERE, and NWS Sacramento, HERE.
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