Involving Alaska’s rural communities in air quality monitoring

Micah Hahn, M.P.H., Ph.D., associate professor of environmental health in UAA's Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies, is the principal investigator and a co-author on a scientific paper published last month in the journal Environmental Research: Health. The paper, titled "Community-based low-cost air monitoring for wildfire smoke resilience: an implementation science evaluation in rural Alaska," is currently available online.

In 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded a $1.3 million grant to Hahn's project, as part of a larger effort at the time to fund research into the health impacts of climate change in communities in Alaska and Washington. For the project, Hahn partnered with her colleagues at the University of Washington's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences - Mariana Cortes Espinosa, Anna Reed, Cat Hartwell, Nicole Errett, Ph.D., and Tania Busch Isaksen, Ph.D. - to investigate issues related to "installing, maintaining and using low-cost [air quality] sensors in rural Alaska communities."

According to Hahn and her colleagues, climate change is contributing to "more frequent and larger wildfires in Alaska," which increases Alaskans' exposure to harmful particulates in wildfire smoke. The EPA and Hahn's previous work have linked exposure to particulates from wildlife smoke to a number of health problems, including respiratory and cardiovascular issues, making reliable air quality data more important than ever. However, collecting data - especially in Alaska's rural and remote communities - can be a challenge.

To understand if using air quality sensors operated by local volunteers can help improve the situation, Hahn and her colleagues interviewed low-cost sensor network organizers and surveyed sensor hosts from 16 small Alaska communities with fewer than 1,000 residents where sensors had been distributed. The sensors were operated by local staff, including Tribal environmental health program officers.

The team found that although the sensors provided air quality information in the short-term, many of the sensors were no longer operating just a few years after installation. Sensor hosts identified several factors that made it difficult to maintain a sensor, including Alaska's harsh environmental conditions, limited access to electricity and Wi-Fi in rural Alaska, the limited life span of the sensors themselves, as well as sensor hosts' unfamiliarity with using the devices and the data they provide. "Few hosts use sensor data to guide local decision making," the authors noted in the paper, "though many more expressed interest in doing so."

Hahn's team believes that community-based monitoring programs are a critical source of local information for Alaska's communities. However, realizing the full value of these programs requires more than deploying sensors. Hahn's research indicates it also requires investments in the people, partnerships and systems needed to sustain monitoring efforts over time.

"Sustained support through training, peer learning opportunities and standardized operating procedures can improve continuity and confidence, particularly during staff turnover," said Hahn. "Together, these strategies can help ensure that community-based monitoring efforts move beyond data collection to meaningfully support preparedness, public health protection and climate resilience."