Atmospheric deposition refers to the transference of pollution elements (such as metals, PAHs, dioxins and furans) from sources into environmental compartments. This process provides vital insight into terrestrial pollution phenomena.
This science literacy article is the ideal way to introduce your students to weathering, erosion and deposition!
Definition
Deposition, the process of depositing material such as rock or sediment, is an unnatural act that creates land formations like deltas, rocky river beds in mountain valleys and ox bow lakes on plains. Contrast this with erosion which wears away at surfaces. Conversely, deposition deposits the material somewhere else where its flow can be limited by objects like trees, hills or other objects that obstruct its passage – thus producing constructive effects like deltas.
Sublimation, on the other hand, refers to a process where gaseous matter directly changes from gaseous to solid form without passing through liquid form first. A great example is when frost forms on windows after humid winter air cools; similar processes also take place during industrial chemical coating processes like physical vapor deposition which involves heating solid substances into gaseous state within a chamber and then depositing onto target material such as glass surfaces.
Causes
Wind, water, gravity and ice are the four primary agents of deposition, each carrying material until it runs out of energy and deposits it. Frozen rivers and glaciers drop rocks as they move; rainwater deposits mud on land while ocean waves bring in silt from beaches to form new beach deposits.
Shape and size of particles also play a part; heavier ones will tend to settle closer to their point of origin while lighter particles travel further away. Furthermore, the speed at which natural agents transport sediments plays an integral part; slower moving carriers mean shorter distances travelled while faster-moving agents provide for more distance travel.
Acidic deposition is an environmental concern in eastern North America and Europe. It consists of sulfuric and nitric acids produced from sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions as well as ammonium produced from ammonia emissions, making up part of the carbon cycle and watershed components. Reduced sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions have seen decreased acid deposition at Hubbard Brook.
Detection
Teachers can introduce deposition in their classroom when children begin exploring states of matter and changes of state from year 4 onwards (aged 8+). This topic should typically be explored using photographs and real life examples – for instance when water vapour changes directly to ice upon coming into contact with cold window pane.
This study’s objective was to create an automated system capable of recognizing data deposition statements in research articles through natural language processing and machine learning techniques. This system has been successfully applied to microarray data deposition statements as well as gene sequences and protein coordinates.
Deposition sentences contain different components that vary across articles, particularly references to data, public repositories and accession numbers. Yet despite this high degree of variation these elements remain reliable indicators of deposition; detailed error analysis shows that top sentence classification errors are among the main sources of misclassification errors.
Prediction
Predicting sediment deposition requires an intricate knowledge of multiple variables, including air and surface conditions. A model that accurately forecasts deposition rates can provide important insight into how pollution sources and environmental controls impact sediment deposits that contain contamination.
Predicting the non-deposition velocity limit using a stochastic technique called GLUE (Genetically Linked Ensemble). In this technique, input variables are modelled as random variables with standard probability distributions; then target variables (like non-deposition velocity limit ) are combined by adding all individual model outputs together.
Figure 9 provides an illustration, where the variation of Rh/d50, CvL and ls is plotted against its impact on Froude number variation. This illustrates that target variables are most strongly affected by input variables with higher GLUE values; hence providing accurate prediction of non-deposition velocity limit across multiple geometries and deposition mechanisms.