Chemical Composition and Sources of Rainwater Collected at a Semi-Rural Site in Ya’an, Southwestern China.docVIP

Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2013, 3, 486-496 /10.4236/acs.2013.34051 Published Online October 2013 (/journal/acs) Chemical Composition and Sources of Rainwater Collected at a Semi-Rural Site in Ya’an, Southwestern China Min Zhao , Li Li , Zhilin Liu , Bin Chen , Jianqiu Huang , Jinwang Cai , Shihuai Deng 1,2 1* 1 1 1 1 1* Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Environmental Engineering, College of Resources and Environment, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China 1 2 Meishan Environmental Monitoring Center, Meishan, China Email: lili@, dengshihuai@163.com * * Received August 3, 2013; revised August 28, 2013; accepted September 3, 2013 Copyright ? 2013 Min Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Rain and snow water samples were collected from Sep. 2010 to Jun. 2011 at a semi-rural site in Ya’an, a city located in the rain-belt along the Tibetan Plateau, to characterize the chemical composition and the sources of precipitation. The collected samples were severely acidified with an annual volume-weighted mean (VWM) pH of 4.03 and an annual acid rain frequency of 79%. SO42? and NH4+ were the most abundant ions, followed by Ca2+ + ? 3 ? + , Na + , F ? , H , NO , Cl , K and Mg 2+ . The acidity of samples was predominantly generated by H2SO4 and HNO3, which were neutralized by NH+4 2+ as much as 65%. NH3 played a major role in neutralizing the acid rain. The average ambient concentration of during sampling periods. Different source apportionment methods, including principle compo- and Ca NH3 was 174.2 μg/m 3 nent analysis (PCA), enrich