Park Air Monitoring Networks Suffer Under Shutdown, Trump Cuts

The complex web of air monitoring networks in the nation’s national parks is bogged down under the government shutdown, widening weak spots in an already underfunded and overstretched network.

The US National Park Service operates a nationwide air quality monitoring system of more than 300 sites in and around parks through its Air Resources Division, measuring an array of pollutants and meteorological data points, including haze levels mandated by the Clean Air Act.

No park monitors have gone offline during this shutdown, but the system of maintenance, monitoring, data gathering, and analysis that is crucial to the visitor experience and national air data can experience interruptions under a federal funding lapse.

Even a common equipment malfunction can go unrepaired in a shutdown, and if that mechanism measures something like wildfire smoke, those measurements for air quality are interrupted, according to a current, furloughed national park employee who spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue.

There are monitors gathering particulate matter and meteorological data that are going unchecked completely in this employee’s park, and they noted annual public reports from the last year will likely be delayed until spring.

“It just gets to be a house of cards,” according to Jim Schaberl, a former NPS manager at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia who retired last year.

“The parks themselves are under a certain amount of scrutiny, but regional offices, support offices, national offices, those are the places that are really at risk,” Schaberl said.

NPS confirmed that no monitors have been taken offline during the shutdown, and monitoring activities are still active in parks with exempted staff, with contractors addressing any technical issues.

“For monitoring equipment that operates automatically and does not require weekly maintenance—such as volcanic emissions, smoke, ozone, camera, and nephelometer instruments—operations are continuing as normal,” an NPS spokesperson said in an email.

Missing Data

Park air monitors are used to gather data for multiple kinds of pollutants, and when the data gathering process is disrupted, it can affect the national air pollution picture.

Monitors in national parks are “co-located,” which means they often gather data that is used for different purposes aside from just park visibility. Park air data even contributes data points to National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which regulates health-harming pollutants nationwide.

That fuller picture of air quality risk is affected when park monitors can’t do their job.

When the ability is reduced to measure the nitrogen and the ozone and other different components that make up the atmosphere, it’s catastrophic, but it’s not immediate, the furloughed park employee said.

Data gathered from park sites need to meet certain standards to be included in national data sets, and if they’re unreliable or incomplete, that park site loses its place in the national air quality picture for a period of time, Schaberl noted.

“When they do that larger modeling where they try to interpolate between all the dots on the maps to say, ‘here’s air quality in general,’ that’s a big deal if there’s a dot missing because there’s only so many dots out there,” he said.

Deepening Insecurity

Budget and personnel issues that contribute to widening gaps in the park air monitoring system have been brewing for years across multiple administrations.

The Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments, or IMPROVE, analyzes air pollution samples from park monitors in compliance with the Clean Air Act, which mandates that states stem pollution that degrades visibility in parks.

IMPROVE has 152 sites collecting samples every three days, and those filters are removed for analysis and replaced every Tuesday, according to Scott Copeland, a Colorado State University research associate and chair of the IMPROVE steering committee.

IMPROVE membership is made up of federal land managers and state air agencies who work cooperatively to measure emissions and visibility in the parks. NPS also provides the contracting oversight that keeps the network running.

But the network is often forced to cut costs and maximize resources, since it’s managing a budget shortfall that spans multiple administrations.

“The people in the program care very much about the program and the data that we’re collecting,” Copeland said. “There are systems in place to keep that going as much as it can.”

Existing financial insecurities have only deepened under the Trump administration, which began with a blitz of government spending cuts and mass federal firings started by the Department of Government Efficiency formerly led by Elon Musk.

“The bigger threat on the horizon right now is simply whether or not those people in the Air Resources Division are at risk for losing their jobs because of the threats from this administration,” according to Ulla Reeves, director of the clean air program at the National Parks Conservation Association.

That unpredictable pattern remains a major source of concern for experts and employees at the parks who handle air quality work.

Leaked internal emails published in the Washington Post in May revealed that NPS was planning to suspend the air monitoring program completely, though the agency told reporters that the stop-work order had been reversed and work continued as usual after the emails were released to the public.

“A lot of things are hanging on by a thread, and we’re just sort of trying to keep our heads down,” the furloughed park employee said.