Seasonal and Climatic Drivers of Wet Deposition Organic Matter at the Continental Scale

Abstract

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) concentrations and composition within wet deposition are rarely monitored despite contributing a large input of bioavailable dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nitrogen (DON) to the Earth's surface. Lacking from the literature are spatially comprehensive assessments of simultaneous measurements of wet deposition DOC and DON chemistry and their dependencies on metrics of climate and environmental factors. Here, we use archived precipitation samples from the US National Atmospheric Deposition Program collected in 2017 to 2018 from 17 sites across six ecoregions to investigate variability in the concentration and composition of depositional DOM. We hypothesize metrics of DOM chemistry vary with ecoregion, season, large-scale climate drivers, and precipitation geographic source. Findings indicate differences in DOC and DON concentrations and loads among ecoregions. The highest wet deposition concentrations are from sites in the Northern Forests and lowest concentrations from sites in Marine West Coast Forests. Summer and autumn samples contained the highest DOC concentrations and DON concentrations that were consistently above detection limit, corresponding with seasonality of peak air temperatures and the phenology of the growing season in the northern hemisphere. Compositional trends suggest lighter DOM molecules in autumn and winter and heavier molecules in spring and summer. Climate drivers explain 51% of variation in DOM chemistry, revealing differing drivers on the concentrations and loads of DOC versus DON in wet deposition. This study highlights the necessity of incorporating DOC and DON measurements into national deposition monitoring networks to understand spatial and temporal feedbacks between climate change, atmospheric chemistry and landscape biogeochemistry.