Overall dry deposition velocities of trace elements measured at harbor and traffic site in central Taiwan Original Research Article

For reasonable and convenient assessments of the characteristics of the dry deposition velocities between Taichung harbor site and Wuchi town site in central Taiwan, the overall dry deposition velocities of several metallic elements were calculated as the particulate diameter (Dp) distributions of large particles (Dp > 10 μm), coarse particles (10 μm < Dp < 2.5 μm), and fine particles (Dp < 2.5 μm) based on the ambient measurements during March–December of 2004. In this work, the dry deposition fluxes showed the higher correlation with coarse particle concentrations than large particle concentrations; however, the least well correlation was observed between the dry deposition fluxes and the fine particle concentrations. The calculated best-fit overall dry deposition velocities obtained using coarse particle concentrations varied from approximately 0.2 cm s−1 for Cr to 1.5 cm s−1 for Pb and 0.2 cm s−1 for Fe to 2.6 cm s−1 for Pb at Taichung harbor and Wuchi town site, respectively. In general, the crustal elements had higher deposition velocities than anthropogenic elements. In addition, overall dry deposition velocities for crustal elements were higher in Wuchi town site than in Taichung harbor site. The results identified the dry deposition flux was mainly contributed from large and coarse particles due to their high deposition velocities. The results also indicated that the best approach to estimate overall dry deposition was by depending on the characteristics of particles with diameters larger than 2.5 μm.