Using iNaturalist Observations to evaluate the extrapolation of herbaceous critical load models
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Critical loads are a useful policy instrument to assess risks to natural ecosystems from air pollution. This presentation is an overview of a project led by the National Park Service to evaluate whether the existing datasets for deriving critical loads in the U.S. for herbaceous species (i.e., National Critical Loads Database [NCLD]; Simkin et al. 2016, Clark et al. 2019) may be augmented with the iNaturalist dataset. They compare the environmental conditions in the NCLD datasets with the iNaturalist for 12 species, and found that the environmental conditions in the iNaturalist dataset is generally broader. This indicates that they could be a useful dataset for augmenting the NCLD, suggesting areas for advancing the critical loads for herbaceous species in the U.S.