Levy, P.E.; Martin Hernandez, C.; Smith, R.I.; Tomlinson, S.J.; Tang, Y.S.; Stedman, J.R.

Sulphur and nitrogen atmospheric Concentration Based Estimated Deposition (CBED) data for the UK, 2017-2019

https://doi.org/10.5285/1efa692d-76ca-406e-8736-837a457e16ee Cite this dataset

These datasets provide Concentration Based Estimated Deposition (CBED) values of sulphur and nitrogen atmospheric deposition for 5x5 kilometres (km) grid squares of the UK averaged over the years 2017 to 2019.

The data consist of deposition values for sulphur, oxidised nitrogen and reduced nitrogen, and base cations. Total deposition is the sum of four components calculated separately: wet deposition, dry deposition of gases, dry deposition of particulate matter and cloud droplet deposition.

Habitat-specific data are provided for (i) moorland/short vegetation everywhere, and (ii) forest everywhere. Additionally, the grid square average over multiple land cover types (i.e. arable, grassland, forest, moorland, urban) is also calculated. The habitat-specific data are recommended for use with critical loads for the calculation of critical load exceedances. The work in generating and compiling the dataset has been funded by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and various Departments for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) contracts.

Publication date: 2021-07-27

Where/When

Study area
Temporal extent: 2017-01-01 to 2019-12-31

Provenance & quality

The Concentration Based Estimated Deposition (CBED) methodology generates 5x5 km resolution maps of wet and dry deposition of sulphur, oxidised and reduced nitrogen, and base cations from measured concentrations of gases and particulate matter in air and measured concentrations of ions in precipitation. These data are collected at sites in the UK Eutrophying and Acidifying Pollutants (UKEAP) network. The site-based measurements are first interpolated to generate maps of concentrations for the UK. The ion concentrations in precipitation are combined with an annual precipitation map from the UK Meteorological Office to generate values of wet deposition. Gas and particulate matter concentration maps are combined with spatially distributed estimates of habitat-specific deposition velocities to generate dry deposition for 5 land cover categories: forest, moorland, grassland, arable and urban. The deposition to the 5 land cover categories are combined, depending on the relative proportions of different land cover categories in the 5x5 km grid square, to generate values for grid square averaged deposition. Dry deposition includes deposition of gases (Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Nitric Acid (HNO3), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) and Ammonia (NH3) and particulate matter (sulphate, nitrate, ammonium, calcium and magnesium) to vegetation. For critical load exceedance calculations, deposition values for moorland are applied to all non-woodland habitats, and deposition values for forest are applied to all woodland habitats.

Data processing was done using the R and GenStat programme and results output as text files. These were then exported as comma separated values for ingestion into the Environmental Information Data Centre.