Welcome
The Air Quality Learning & Demonstration Center (AQL&DC) was established during the spring and summer season of 2003. Our grand opening was held September 12, 2003. We are pleased that you have chosen to visit our website, and wish you a very pleasant and informative visit; please do not hesitate to contant us with any questions you may have. At the center we have developed a self guided tour along our paths with many display panels and upright display cabinets. This tour is now available online with the same information but lacking the live experience. We invite you to take our virtual tour. Please feel free to return to this web site to see the developing symptoms from inside open-top chambers equipped with web cameras. Repeated visits to the site are often required to be able to see the advancing symptoms of air pollution injury as caused by season long exposures of plants that are known to be sensitivie to ozone air pollution.
Introduction
Our most valuable natural resource is... AIR. Granted we also require water, food, shelter, medicines and many other favorable conditions in order to sustain human life on planet Earth. Of all of these requirements for life, air is the one that is most often taken for granted. Yet in comparison, air is the most often imporatnt and limiting factor to our lives. It therefore, becomes imperative that we understand what air is and the effects that air pollution has on our well being. The focus of our Center is to inform persons of all ages about our needs for improving our national, regional, and even more local air quality. Since our programs address the effects of air pollutants on plants as another of our requirements for Life, our more specific aims are to demonstrate the effects of air pollution on our agricultural crops, native plants, and forest tree species.
A central focus of this AQL&DC is the presence of the environmentally controlled building and the associated air quality monitoring and meteorological equipment. This is an official Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Air Quality Montoring Station. The station itself was established in the Fall of 1999 and is one of many monitoring stations that have been established in urban and more rural areas across the Commonwealth. Our Penn State program operates this station and several others that have been located in forested and agricultural areas of north central Pennsylvania. The air quality data collected from these monitoring stations is used in studies that are designed to determine the effects of air pollutants on plant health and productivity