New Insights Into Multi‐Component Atmospheric Wet Deposition Across China: A Multidimensional Analysis

Abstract

AbstractAtmospheric wet deposition has attracted much attention because of its removal function of aerosol particles and impact on ecosystem. It is a complex multi‐component process due to various pollutants emission sources and reaction processes. However, traditional studies mainly focused on single components, ignoring the internal relationships and the comprehensive deposition level; this has hindered the comprehensive understanding and the assessment of ecological effects of deposition. Here, based on the monitoring of wet deposition across 52 stations during 2013–2018 in China, we used two novel multidimensional methods to investigate multi‐component atmospheric wet deposition: network analysis and comprehensive index. Network analysis is a new method that can help better explore the overall relationship between multiple components. We found that due to the improvement of human development level and the diversification of energy sources, the air pollutants sources became more diversified, which reduced the relationship between different deposition components and made the multi‐component deposition network looser. Comprehensive index is a method to realize the fusion of multiple parameters, which can explore the comprehensive effect of multi‐component atmospheric deposition on ecosystems. The high deposition comprehensive index occurred in the central and south China, and mainly influenced by human activities (energy consumption, fertilization, and vehicle ownership) and precipitation, which means that ecosystems in these regions are exposed to greater impacts by wet deposition. The findings provide new insights into understanding multi‐component atmospheric deposition and its comprehensive ecological effects.