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Acid Rain in the Northeastern United States: documentation

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Acid Rain                                   (Updated 8/92) Stock #92017
Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture
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accuracy.  Moreover, the Economic Research Service makes no warranty
that data supplied in this form are either accurate transcriptions from
source materials or appropriate for a particular user purpose.

For comments or further information contact:
                        Westenbarger, David--DWEST@econ.ag.gov             

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                                             e-mail:service@econ.ag.gov/ 

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                                                                August 1992

               ACID RAIN IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

This database contains spring (April-June) and summer (July-September) 
nitrate and sulfate wet deposition records for 1980-90, at the state and 
county levels of aggregation for the states in the northeastern U.S.  The
following states are included in the database:  Connecticut, Delaware, the 
District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New 
Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, 
Virginia, and West Virginia.

The records for all the states and counties reside together in separate files 
for each season (ARSPRING.WK1 and ARSUMMER.WK1).  State-level records begin 
in cell D8 and county-level records begin in cell D28.  Within each table, 
the first eleven columns (D through N) contain observations for nitrate wet 
depositions for 1980-90, while the last eleven columns (P through Z) contain 
sulfate wet depositions for 1980-90.

The aggregates estimate the magnitude of nitrate and sulfate wet depositions 
(kilograms per hectare) for the state or county, constructed from observations
taken at monitoring sites located throughout the region.  The geostatistical
spatial smoothing technique known as Kriging was used to interpolate the 
monitoring station data to a 40 by 32 block grid of 30 minute by 30 minute 
blocks covering the entire region.  These blocks were then overlaid on maps 
of the state and county boundaries and blocks and portions of blocks that
fell in each region were weighted by land area and averaged over the county 
or state.  

Monitoring station data was obtained from the National Atmospheric Deposition 
Program/National Trends Network in Fort Collins, Colorado, which maintains a 
system of approximately 200 monitoring stations throughout the United States 
and Canada.  Concentrations measured in milligrams per liter were converted 
to depositions, weighting by rainfall at each monitoring station before the 
Kriging procedure was performed.  The state- and county-level depositions could
be reconverted to concentrations using state and county estimates of rainfall
for the region.



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