Atmospheric Sulfur Deposition onto Different Ecosystems Over China

The regional acid deposition model system (RegADMS) was applied to simulate the air sulfur deposition onto different landuse types over China, in which the dry deposition velocities of SO2 and sulfate aerosol (SO42−) were estimated by use of a big leaf resistance analogy model and the wet scavenging coefficients were parameterized in terms of precipitation rate. Investigations show that the annual total sulfur deposition over mainland China is 7.24 mt (1 mt = 106 ton) , in which dry deposition and wet deposition accounts for 56 and 44%, respectively. The sulfur deposition onto agriculture land, grass land, and forest land is 1.09, 3.6 and 1.41 mt, respectively, which sums 6.1 mt and accounts for 84% of the total sulfur deposition. The modeled sulfur deposition was in agreement with the measurement conducted at farmland in Yingtan, a typical read soil region in Jiangxi province of China, during the period of November 1998–October 1999. The total sulfur deposition at the Yingtan site is about 10.3 gm−2 year−1 of which 83% is dry deposition. The modeling sulfur deposition at the same site is 8.4 gm−2 year−1. Furthermore, the comparison between RegADMS and RAINS-ASIA on modeling regional sulfur deposition shows the consistence of the two models. The correlation coefficient between the simulated sulfur deposition at the medium-large cities reaches 0.72.