Environment and Climate Change Canada collected ambient air samples from three monitoring sites in Alberta’s oil sands region—Mannix (AMS5), Lower Camp (AMS11), and Fort McKay South (AMS13)—between December 2010 and July 2012. These samples were analyzed for polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), alkylated PAHs, and dibenzothiophenes (DBTs), in both air and precipitation.
Using these measurements, a database of scavenging ratios was developed to quantify the removal of PACs by snow and rain. Since dry deposition cannot be measured directly, air concentrations were used to estimate dry deposition amounts. A dry deposition algorithm was also created and applied to various land cover types surrounding the monitoring sites.
The resulting dataset includes:
-
Scavenging ratio statistics for 43 PAC species in snow and rain.
-
Statistics of modeled hourly dry deposition velocities for these PACs over different land cover types during 2011.
-
Seasonal and annual estimates of dry and wet deposition for three groups of PACs (PAHs, Alkylated PAHs, and DBTs) at the three sites.
These deposition estimates can be integrated with data on other pollutants to assess cumulative environmental impacts on ecosystems and communities within and downwind of the oil sands region.