Arguing for Air Quality as a success story and co-benefit in rural-urban research and policy

My contribution to the SUS-RURI workshop in Ames, Iowa (August 2019) has been published along with the entire workshop proceeding: "Developing a Convergence Sustainable Urban Systems (SUS) Agenda for Redesigning the Urban-Rural Interface (RURI) along the Mississippi River Watersheds." Check it out.

The conference proceedings are here: https://sus-ruri.pubpub.org/

And my contribution to the proceedings is here: https://sus-ruri.pubpub.org/pub/stanier/release/3

Figure 1. Map of estimated fine particle pollution (µg per cubic meter PM2.5) for 2007 and for 2016. Derived from van Donkelaar et al. (2019). See more information on the data source below.

In my piece, "Considering Air Quality and Climate Co-Benefits During Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in the Mississippi River Watershed," I place the successes that we've had in improving air quality into the context of the challenges of managing the Urban-Rural Interface in the Mississippi River watershed.

The piece is timely -- Iowa City has just proposed a $1M allocation from the city budget to address climate issues, while in my piece I note that "climate change mitigation (reducing emissions) and climate change adaptation (building to accommodate future climate) will require shifting some current investments within these economic sectors as well as increasing investments due to costlier alternatives and stranded assets" and counting all the construction and investment costs -- this encompasses about $1 billion dollars of economic activity a year in the Iowa City metro area alone. Most of this investment is in the private sector -- but a portion will have to be in the public sector.

The data source for the maps, and more information on the PM2.5 maps themselves can be found at my earlier post.