Environmental News
Environmental News from Boulder, Colorado
Boulder will burn its open space
Mar 13th
City to conduct prescribed grassland burns this month
The City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP) department and the Boulder Fire Department will be conducting prescribed grassland burns this month. The burns will be conducted only if environmental and weather conditions fall within city burn plan guidelines. Ignitions will not begin before 10 a.m. and will end no later than 2 p.m.
Prescribed burns will be conducted at the following sites:
- OSMP Fell property, a 15-acre site located north of Valmont Road and east of 75th Street,
- OSMP Van Vleet property, a 25-acre site located west of South Boulder Creek and south of South Boulder Road.
- OSMP Gephard property, a 20-acre site located east of South Boulder Creek, north of South Boulder Road, and west of Cherryvale Rd.
Boulder’s ecosystems have evolved with fire over thousands of years. The prescribed burning of these areas will improve habitat for native plants and wildlife.
Additionally, OSMP, in conjunction with the Boulder Fire Department, will be conducting ditch burns throughout the spring on the city’s agricultural properties. OSMP has significant shares of water rights used primarily to support agricultural activity in the Boulder Valley. Ditch burning is important to the productivity of agricultural cropland and the efficiency of water delivery. Periodic burning removes the build up of plant debris in irrigation ditches and also keeps weeds at bay, reducing herbicide use. Burning is a cost effective way to clear irrigation ditches before the spring water run off.
No burning will occur on Red Air Quality days. Trained fire personnel and natural resource advisors will be on site during this activity.
For questions about prescribed burning on OSMP properties, please call 303-441-3440 or visit www.OSMP.org.
Help Boulder keep an eye on the birdies
Mar 13th
Birds of Special Concern/Raptor Monitor Program volunteers needed
The City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department’s Urban Resources division is seeking volunteers for its Birds of Special Concern/Raptor Monitor Program at the Boulder Reservoir, 5565 N. 51st St. Monitors should be able to work independently and have their own binoculars. Skilled birders are preferred, but some identification training will be provided for beginners.
Responsibilities include monitoring and reporting animal presence, bird behavior, nest locations, fledgling success and wildlife closure violations, and assisting with educating the public. Commitment is flexible but would preferably be from one to three hours per week, from mid-April through early August.
Training and orientation will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 14. For location and more information, contact Mary Malley, coordinator of volunteer services, at 303-413-7245
CU Boulder — LA air pollution has a surprise problem
Mar 2nd
Gasoline worse than diesel when it
comes to some types of air pollution
comes to some types of air pollution
The exhaust fumes from gasoline vehicles contribute more to the production of a specific type of air pollution — secondary organic aerosols — than those from diesel vehicles, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory and other colleagues.
“The surprising result we found was that it wasn’t diesel engines that were contributing the most to the organic aerosols in L.A.,” said CIRES research scientist Roya Bahreini who led the study and also works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ESRL. “This was contrary to what the scientific community expected.”
SOAs are tiny particles that are formed in air and make up typically 40-60 percent of the aerosol mass in urban environments. This is important because fine-particle pollution can cause human health effects, such as heart or respiratory problems.
Due to the harmful nature of these particles and the fact that they can also impact the climate and can reduce visibility, scientists want to understand how they form, Bahreini said. Researchers had already established that SOAs could be formed from gases released by gasoline engines, diesel engines and natural sources — biogenic agents from plants and trees — but they had not determined which of these sources were the most important, she said.
“We needed to do the study in a location where we could separate the contribution from vehicles from that of natural emissions from vegetation,” Bahreini said.
Los Angeles proved to be an ideal location. Flanked by an ocean on one side and by mountains to the north and the east, it is, in terms of air circulation, relatively isolated, Bahreini said. At this location, the scientists made three weekday and three weekend flights with the NOAA P3 research aircraft, which hosted an arsenal of instruments designed to measure different aspects of air pollution.
“Each instrument tells a story about one piece of the puzzle,” Bahreini said. “Where do the particles come from? How are they different from weekday to weekend, and are the sources of vehicle emissions different from weekday to weekend?”
From their measurements, the scientists were able to confirm, as expected, that diesel trucks were used less during weekends, while the use of gasoline vehicles remained nearly constant throughout the week. The team then expected that the weekend levels of SOAs would take a dive from their weekday levels, Bahreini said.
But that was not what they found.
Instead, the levels of SOA particles remained relatively unchanged from their weekday levels. Because the scientists knew that the only two sources for SOA production in this location were gasoline and diesel fumes, the study’s result pointed directly to gasoline as the key source.
“The contribution of diesel to SOA is almost negligible,” Bahreini said. “Even being conservative, we could deduce from our results that the maximum upper limit of contribution to SOA would be 20 percent.”
That leaves gasoline contributing the other 80 percent or more of the SOA, Bahreini said. The finding was published online March 1 in Geophysical Research Letters. “While diesel engines emit other pollutants such as soot and nitrogen oxides, for organic aerosol pollution they are not the primary culprit,” Bahreini said.
If the scientists were to apply their findings from the L.A. study to the rest of the world, a decrease in the emission of organic species from gasoline engines may significantly reduce SOA concentrations on a global scale as well. This suggests future research aimed at understanding ways to reduce gasoline emissions would be valuable.
The study was funded by NOAA’s Climate Change and Air Quality Programs, the California Air Resources Board and the National Science Foundation.
CIRES coauthors on the team include Joost de Gouw, Carsten Warneke, Harald Stark, William Dube, Jessica Gilman, Katherine Hall, John Holloway, Anne Perring, Joshua Schwarz, Ryan Spackman and Nicholas Wagner.
