Impacts of Industrial Atmospheric Emissions on Watershed Export of Dissolved Ions in Coastal Streams: R Code and Data

R Code and Data for the 2020 publication in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Electronic ISSN 1573-2959 Print ISSN 0167-6369 Impacts of Industrial Atmospheric Emissions on Watershed Export of Dissolved Ions in Coastal Streams: a Bayesian Modeling Approach Timothy J. Maguire1,*, R. Paul Weidman1,2, Scott O.C. Mundle1,3, Jonathan W. Moore2,4, Kyle A. Chezik4, and Daniel T. Selbie2,5 1. Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, ON 2. School of Resources and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC 3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON 4. Earth 2 Oceans Research Group, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC 5. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Science Branch, Pacific Region, Cultus Lake Salmon Research Laboratory, Cultus Lake, BC * corresponding author: maguiret@uwindsor.ca Abstract Anthropogenic atmospheric emission of sulfur (S) has been linked to disrupted watershed biogeochemical processes through soil and surface water acidification. Here, watershed-scale impacts of acid deposition on tributary concentrations and watershed exports of major nutrients and ions were quantified for the Kitimat River Watershed, British Columbia. The Kitimat watershed is impacted by emissions from an aluminum smelting facility at the river estuary. Emissions move up airshed overlying the watershed and impact western tributaries leaving eastern tributaries available as reference. Sulfate (SO4), fluoride (F), nitrate (NO3), and chloride (Cl) were significantly higher in impacted tributaries. F concentrations exceeded the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment standard for aquatic life in 83% of samples collected from impacted streams. Watershed export and associated uncertainty were determined by bootstrapped flow-stratified Beale’s unbiased estimator. Impact of emissions on watershed export was modeled in a Bayesian approach to include uncertainty in the export estimate to inform the uncertainty of model parameters. Export of SO4 .