2021 marks the inaugural Alberta Capital Airshed Clean Air Awards. Celebrate with us!
What are these awards for?
Alberta Capital Airshed is your community organization dedicated to collecting and sharing information about ambient air quality in the Alberta Capital Region. We want to give a shoutout to the individuals and organizations that are doing good work to bring awareness, education and action for clean air.
Categories:
- Raising Awareness of Air Quality
- Innovation and Application of Technology
- Contributions Toward Community Air Quality
Raising Awareness of Air Quality
Tomorrow Foundation for a Sustainable Future undertook a webinar series on community science and air quality monitoring adjacent to various roadways. Topics included:
- Engaging Communities in Air Quality: Trends, Technology and Citizen Science
- Urban Trees: Improving Air Quality in our Neighbourhoods
- Lichens as Biomonitors for Urban Air Quality and Climate
- YEG Tree Map: Calculating Eco Benefits of our Urban Forest
These webinars built community, made connections between experts and provided a translations between academic research and everyday life for residents. In the process, Tomorrow Foundation raised awareness for different aspects of air quality.
You can view the webinar recordings on the Tomorrow Foundation website or on YouTube.
Thank you to Elizabeth Cytko, Vice President of Tomorrow Foundation, for accepting this award on behalf of the organization.
Innovation and Application of Technology
Lehigh Hanson has been using simple, transportable air quality monitoring technology to better understand air quality impacts around the cement plant. Lehigh Hanson initially started using Flow monitors out of curiosity. Now they use them at the cement plant to evaluate conditions in certain areas. Through the cement plant’s use, Lehigh has also promoted these personal monitors elsewhere in their group (aggregates and concrete).
The Edmonton plant’s experience has lead to Lehigh’s aggregate groups in Western Canada purchasing a couple Flow2’s for internal surveying. They are also considering the Purple Air for particulate matter fence line monitoring.
Lehigh has also been supportive of citizen science activities led by Alberta Capital Airshed by developing these technologies through co-location and evaluation studies with different citizen science monitors at Lehigh’s Woodcroft air quality monitoring station.
You can learn more about Lehigh Hanson on their website at https://www.lehighhanson.com.
Thank you to Brent Korobanik, Environmental Manager with Lehigh Hanson, for accepting this award on behalf of the organization.
Contributions Toward Community Air Quality
Sarah Hunter is our award recipient for her contributions toward community air quality. Sarah has been a community organizer to help facilitate productive conversation between residents, private industry (cleanit greenit), and multiple level of government (municipal, provincial and even federal).
We met Sarah as she began learning about air quality and the technologies available to measure air quality. Well done, Sarah. You’re really making an impact toward empowering community to make a difference for clean air.
Alberta Capital Airshed would also like to acknowledge Parkland Air Management Zone (PAMZ), our neighbouring Airshed to the south, for inspiration with their Blue Sky Awards program.