The National Forest Management Act requires every national forest and grassland managed by the Forest Service to develop and maintain a land management plan.  The process for plan development and revision, along with the required plan content, is outlined in the Forest Service Planning Rule.  The Forest Service released a revised Planning Rule in 2012, which for the first time requires national forests and grasslands to consider air quality when developing plan components.  Specifically, Planning Rule directives require an assessment of critical load exceedances.  If critical loads have been exceeded, forests and grasslands are required to develop plan components to protect or restore key ecosystem characteristics.

These requirements provided a unique opportunity to standardize the way national forests view and manage air quality, specifically implementing the use of critical loads of air pollution into the land management planning process.  The Forest Service developed the Air Quality Portal for Land Management Planning in response to these new requirements.  The Air Quality Portal is a decision support system based in large part on the critical loads information calculated and compiled by the NADP Critical Loads of Atmospheric Deposition Science Committee in the National Critical Loads Database. 

By creating an easy-to-use resource to guide national forests in considering and treating air quality for land management planning, we ensure a nationally consistent methodology which incorporates the best available science and data and eases the burden on our national forests.  The site includes background information on atmospheric deposition and critical loads of air pollution, a standardized air quality assessment process (including guidance on assessing critical loads of air pollution for land management planning), national air quality data, sample forest plan components and assessments, and training materials.  A public-facing version of the Air Quality Portal for Land Management Planning should be completed by the fall NADP meeting.  The Forest Service would like to present the capability of this new tool to the NADP community in order to demonstrate how we are currently implementing CLAD and TDEP information in land management, and to suggest future collaborative opportunities.