Ecological Monitoring of Acid Deposition in the Arctic Region

Abstract

The issue of atmospheric air pollution in the Arctic is of global nature and concerns the entire humanity. The fragile nature of high latitudes is extremely vulnerable to human impacts. The negative effects are caused not only by plants and factories located in the northern latitudes but also by far away plants in Central Europe, America, and Asia. As a result, pollutants migrating to the Arctic significantly affect the environmental situation in the northern regions of the planet. In order to improve the environmental situation in the Arctic, environment quality has to be managed properly in all regions of the world. This article is focused on the analysis of the situation in the Arctic region of Russia, namely in the North of the Russian Plain. Starting from the 1980's, Russia has conducted environmental monitoring of the snow cover to determine critical pollutant loads on natural ecosystems across the country. A large amount of data has been accumulated allowing to carry out an in-depth analysis of the pollution of atmospheric precipitations and snow cover with acid-forming compounds. This article summarizes the results of research conducted from 1982 to 2013, including: 1) pollutant emission trends compared to available atmospheric air monitoring data, 2) spatial distribution of acidified precipitation occurrences, 3) neutralization probability, 4) calculation of sulphur deposition loads compared to the reference values proposed as criti- cal loads by the European Monitoring and Evaluation Program (EMEP)