The rain that falls on the Adirondack Museum, like the rain that falls throughout the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, is significantly more acidic than natural rainwater. The snow that covers Blue Mountain Lake in the winter is acidic. The fog and clouds that often obscure Blue Mountain are highly acidic. Even the dust in the air contains acid compounds. The rain, snow, fog, dust, and atmospheric gases are lumped under the term "acid deposition."

The effects of acid deposition on the Adirondack ecosystem have been pervasive. Hundreds of lakes and ponds once teeming with trout and tadpoles, frogs and salamanders, are now clear and empty of such life. Also gone from these lakes and ponds are creatures higher on the food chain, such as otters, osprey, and loons. Mountaintops once crowned with spruce now reveal stands of dead and dying trees. (You have only to look with binoculars at the summit of Blue Mountain from the Museum grounds to see one such area.) Since the 1960s more than half of the large canopy red spruce have died in the Adirondacks and Green Mountains. Metals exposed to weather rust and corrode faster and leach greater amounts of toxic materials into drinking water and the food chain.

Great strides have been made in reducing the pollutants that create acid deposition, but recent studies indicate that these gains have not been enough. The damage continues.

The Adirondack Museum is dedicated to deepening our understanding of how humans have been affected by their natural environment through time, and how they have affected that environment. We have attempted here to provide you with the most objective scientific information on the effects of acid deposition on the Adirondacks, and to bring you up-to-date on the attempts by state and national governments to improve the situation.