Project Title: Investigation of Point Source Emissions Effects on Air Quality at Big Bend National Park Using GIS

SCERP Project Number: A98-3

Principal Investigator: Richard J. Okrasinski

Task Manager's affiliation: New Mexico State University

Goal: This project will integrate existing geographical, pollutant emission, and meteorological and climatological data surrounding the Big Bend region of Texas and Mexico into a GIS database.

The Big Bend region of Texas and Mexico is an area of great natural beauty containing many parks and reserves, including Big Bend National Park, a Class I protected area. There has been concern in recent years about the deterioration of visibility and the deposition of acidic substances in the region due to air pollutants. To develop effective strategies to alleviate this problem, the source of these contaminants must be determined and measurements of how much the air quality would change as a result of changes in emissions at different sources needs to be assessed. Studies to address these questions require a great amount of geographical spatial data.

To facilitate the study of the transport of pollutants into the area, the NMSU Physical Science Laboratory (PSL) proposes to integrate existing geographical, pollutant emission, and meteorological and climatological data surrounding Big Bend into a GIS (Geographical Information System) database. The database will be specifically designed so that it can be used by the EPA MESOPUFF II transport and dispersion model to visualize and analyze the transportation and concentration of various pollutants in the Big Bend region. The use of the GIS will facilitate the separate analysis of individual emission sources or emission source areas to investigate their relative importance to the air quality at Big Bend during different times of the year. The area covered will include both sides of the border and will be large enough to include the most likely emission sources and regions such as Carbon I and II, the Texas Gulf Coast, and Monterrey. The database will be provided in a form that can be used by ARCVIEW GIS software and will be described in a technical report.

The project will be helpful to several agencies that are interested in improving air quality in the Big Bend region including the National Park Service Air Quality Division and the EPA. Besides determining the relative significance of the various sources of atmospheric contaminants, the information in the database will also be useful for planning future intensive measurement programs for the area.

Project is still ongoing.

Last updated 5/6/99