Air (18)
The days the Earth stood still (Part 1): Covid cleared the air in the lonely Smokies
Written by Thomas Fraser
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Air Resource Specialist is seen at the Look Rock air quality research station. Courtesy National Park ServiceThe lack of regional and local vehicle traffic during the pandemic greatly reduced measurable pollution in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
This is your Hellbender weekend read, and the first in an occasional Hellbender Press series about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the natural world
Great Smoky Mountains National Park shut down for six weeks in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Recorded emissions reductions during that period in part illustrate the role motor vehicles play in the park's vexing air-quality issues. The full cascade of effects from the pollution reductions are still being studied.
Hellbender Press interviewed park air quality specialist Jim Renfro about the marked reduction of carbon dioxide and other pollutants documented during the park closure during the pandemic, and the special scientific opportunities it presents. He responded to the following questions via email.
Hellbender Press: You cited “several hundred tons" in pollutant reductions during an interview with WBIR of Knoxville (in 2020). What types of air pollutants does this figure include?
- great smoky mountains national park
- coronavirus
- smokies
- pandemic
- air pollution
- covid19
- air quality
- shutdown
- pollutant reduction
- carbon dioxide
- co2
- motor vehicle
- jim renfro
- nox
- voc
- improvement
- haze
- ozone
- look rock
- emission
- greenhouse gas
- visitation
- visitor
- traffic volume
- analysis
- monitoring station
- particulate matter
- mercury
- acid deposition
- quality control
- quality assurance
- so2 regional haze rule
- national park service
- nps
- air resource specialist
- ecosystem
- bioaccumulation
- so2
- road closure
- power plant
- epa
- environmental protection agency
KUB commits to solar power — and a controversial long-term relationship with TVA
Written by Tracy Haun Owens
Last year, Knoxville Utilities Board committed to supplying 20 percent of its electricity through solar generation by 2023, through Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Green Invest program. By 2023, KUB will provide 502 megawatts annually of new-to-the-grid solar power to its customers. This represents the equivalent of enough energy to power 83,000 homes. The $1.63 million cost will be paid by a credit provided by TVA as part of its 20-year partnership agreement with KUB.
The announcement was celebrated by solar energy advocates, including the Tennessee Solar Energy Industries Association, but some environmental watchdogs maintain there are issues with the contracts that local power companies had to enter into with TVA to participate in Green Invest.
Tina Brouwer, left, and Ranger Clare Dattilo look for birds Jan. 3 at Seven Islands State Birding Park. Thomas Fraser/Hellbender Press
Dozens join annual avian survey at Seven Islands State Birding Park
Kodak, Tennessee — State park interpretive ranger Clare Dattilo led the group slowly but surely across the muddy winter landscape of Seven Islands State Birding Park, taking note of birdsong and investigating undulating flashes of quick color against the backdrop of green cedars and nude tree branches and grasses flattened by the weight of a recent snow.
Even in the dead of winter, woods and fields are filled with life.
The birding park hosted both trained ornithologists and casual birdwatchers to scope out species to include in the annual Audubon Society Christmas bird count. Dattilo was tallying her numbers with a couple of journalists and a long-time friend from college.
Bluff Mountain loomed to the east. The crest of the Smokies, in commanding view on clear days, was shrouded in freezing fog. Ring-billed seagulls flew high overhead while a couple of Carolina wrens chirped in the underbrush.
Bursts of bluebirds and cardinals yielded glimpses of color. Flycatchers and downy woodpeckers concentrated on their rhythmic work amidst the barren winter branches of the huge oaks, hickories and maples that spread across the ridges of the park and into its small hollows. White-tailed deer browsed silently, undeterred and seemingly and correctly unbothered by the birdwatchers.
The red-cockaded woodpecker is vanishingly rare, but its true status in the wild is not known. Courtesy Stephen Lyn Bales
‘Lord God Bird’ of lore, a sad reminder of what we have lost
We stood agape. Before us, on a white countertop as big as a ping pong table, lay 17 dead ivory-billed woodpeckers. They were museum specimens neatly arranged in two groups: nine males and eight females, all lined up like ears of corn in separate wooden trays. Each had a paper label attached to a leg with handwritten notation of when and where it had been collected; most seemed to date from the late 1800s. Being in the presence of so many rendered us reverently speechless.