Particulate haze settles over the high slopes

July 15, 2026Taconic Mountains

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The ridge caught a haze today that rides in on wind from the west—air quality indices spiked to moderate, the kind of event that often signals distant wildfire smoke drifting up the continent. At elevation, these high slopes have no shelter from whatever the wind carries. The exposed spruce and thin soils here are already scarred from the acid rain years of the 1970s, and today's particulates settle onto landscapes with little margin for recovery.

Lichen and lichen-dependent species feel these shifts acutely. The thinner the soil and the more exposed the ridge, the more vulnerable the whole ecosystem becomes to cumulative insult—old injuries and new ones stacking together. The forecast calls for similar conditions tomorrow.

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