DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists from the Nicholas School and North Carolina State University are spearheading the first national workshop on agricultural air pollution in response to what they see as agriculture’s growing affect on the nation’s air.

“The Workshop on Agricultural Air Quality: State of the Science,” will be held at the Bolger Conference Center in Potomac, Md. from June 5-8.  The workshop is hosted jointly by NC State, the Nicholas School and the Ecological Society of America.  Sponsors include the USDA and the National Science Foundation.

Viney Aneja, professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State and William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School and James B. 51 Professor of Biogeochemistry at 51 are co-chairing the workshop.

“Industrial agriculture is a very effective and efficient way to feed large populations, but no one has ever really studied the impact of agricultural pollution on air quality,” Aneja says. “With the varied crops we produce and the fact that we have agriculture throughout our state instead of just in one area, North Carolina is really ground zero in terms of agricultural air pollution.”

Schlesinger says, “By partnering the research expertise of the Nicholas School, NC State and other leading institutions, we hope to capture the imagination of the scientific community and bring this issue national and global prominence.”

Reducing agriculture’s harmful effects on the environment, while increasing its ability to provide food for Earth’s growing population, is of critical importance, Schlesinger says.  “Over the next 50 years, the Earth’s human population is predicted to increase from 6.1 billion to more than nine billion, creating a parallel increase in the demand for agricultural commodities,” he explains.  “Scientists, social scientists, economists, engineers, business leaders and policymakers are going to have to put aside political, geographic and disciplinary differences and work together to address this problem. That’s what this workshop is all about.”

Workshop participants will address two main issues: identifying the airborne pollutants produced by agriculture, and suggesting the best practices for mitigating these emissions in order to preserve the environment. 

More than 400 attendees – including policy makers, environmentalists, scientists, and economists – from the United States and nations around the world are expected to participate. Posters and plenary sessions will give attendees from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds opportunities to find common ground.

Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, will give the keynote address at 8:45 a.m. on June 5, following welcoming remarks by Schlesinger, Aneja and James L. Oblinger, chancellor of NC State.

Prasad Kasibhatla, associate professor of environmental chemistry at the Nicholas School, will present findings on  “Global Scale Analysis of the Atmospheric Impact of Fire Emissions” at 1:50 p.m. on June 6. 

The workshop’s conclusions will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is funded by a three-year, $400,000 grant from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES), with additional funding from the National Science Foundation and other organizations.

For more information, contact Tim Lucas at the Nicholas School, (919) 613-8084 ortdlucas@duke.edu, or Mick Kulikowski at (919) 515-3470 or mich_kulikowski@ncsu.edu

For an agenda or to read a feature article on the workshop that was published in EOS, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, go to .