title: Urban and rural transport of semivolatile organic compounds at regional scale: A multimedia model approach.
abstract: Urban areas are generally regarded as major sources of some semivolatile organic compounds and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to the surrounding regions. Huge differences in contaminant emissions between urban and rural areas directly affect their fate in environmental media. Little is known about POPs behavior between urban and rural areas at a regional scale. A spatially resolved Berkeley-Trent-Urban-Rural Fate Model (BETR-UR) was designed by coupling land cover information to simulate the transport of POPs between urban and rural areas, and the Bohai Rim was used as a case study to estimate Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) fate. The processes of contaminant fate including emission, inter-compartmental transfer, advection and degradation in urban and rural areas were simulated in the model. Simulated PAH concentrations in environmental media of urban and rural areas were very close to measured values. The model accuracy was highly improved, with the average absolute relative error for PAH concentrations reduced from 37% to 3% compared with unimproved model results. PAH concentrations in urban soil and air were considerably higher than those in rural areas. Sensitivity analysis showed temperature was the most influential parameter for Phen rather than for Bap, whose fate was more influenced by emission rate, compartment dimension, transport velocity and chemical persistence. Uncertainty analysis indicated modeled results in urban media had higher uncertainty than those in rural areas due to larger variations of emissions in urban areas. The differences in urban and rural areas provided us with valuable guidance on policy setting for urban-rural POP control.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Shuai
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China. Electronic address: yllu@rcees.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yonglong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Tieyu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Yueqing
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China.
authors.forename: Shijie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons / Q000032:analysis / Q000737:chemistry; D012424:Rural Population; D035501:Uncertainty; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D011084:Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons; D055549:Volatile Organic Compounds
keywords: Land use; Multimedia model; PAH fate; Regional scale