Major Ions: Precipitation Chemistry Data from Canadian Monitoring Networks

Major ions data tracks key chemical constituents in precipitation, including chloride, nitrate, sulfate, ammonium, sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. The dataset, managed by Environment and Climate Change Canada, also includes pH and precipitation depth measurements collected by provincial, national, and bi-national networks using wet-only collectors. Measurement periods vary between 24-hour and weekly cycles depending on the network.

Use Cases

• Modeling acid rain and its environmental impact based on sulfate and nitrate ion concentrations.
• Analyzing sources of atmospheric pollution based on the ratio of sodium, calcium, and magnesium ions.
• Calculating wet deposition fluxes of pollutants by multiplying ion concentrations with precipitation depth.
• Studying seasonal trends in precipitation chemistry based on time-series data from multiple networks.

Strengths

• Data includes eight key ions plus pH and precipitation depth, enabling comprehensive chemical analysis.
• Sourced from multiple provincial, national, and bi-national monitoring networks, suggesting broad spatial coverage.
• Uses standardized wet-only precipitation collectors, which sample only during rain or snow events.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset scale are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Temporal and geographic coverage specifics are not detailed in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

Environment and Climate Change Canada

Collection Method

Collected by several provincial, national, and bi-national networks using wet-only precipitation collectors, snow gauges, and rain gauges.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 14:11:53.731339; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada (implied from source and network description)