_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Corresponding author: E-mail: gofawole@oauife.edu.ng; British Journal of Applied Science & Technology 13(1): 1-15, 2016, Article no.BJAST.22331 ISSN: 2231-0843, NLM ID: 101664541 SCIENCEDOMAIN international www.sciencedomain.org Compositional and Air-mass Trajectory Analysis of a Heavy Dust Episode (HDE) Aerosols in Ile-Ife, Nigeria Olusegun Gabriel Fawole 1* , Bolutife Olofinjana 2 and Oyediran Kayode Owoade 1 1 Environmental Research Laboratory (ERL), Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 220005, Nigeria. 2 Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, 220005, Nigeria. Authors’ contributions This work was carried out in collaboration between all authors. Authors OGF and OKO wrote the protocol and were both involved in the sample collection. Author BO carried out the SEM/EDX and optical microscopy analysis. Author OGF carried out the air-mass trajectory analysis and the draft of the initial manuscript. All authors were involved in the final compilation and editing of the manuscript. Article Information DOI: 10.9734/BJAST/2016/22331 Editor(s): (1) João Miguel Dias, Habilitation in Department of Physics, CESAM, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Reviewers: (1) Isidro A. Pérez, University of Valladolid, Spain. (2) João Fernando Pereira Gomes, Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, Portugal. (3) João Miranda Garcia, Polytechnic Institute of Setubal (IPS), Portugal. (4) Yele Sun, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Complete Peer review History: http://sciencedomain.org/review-history/12185 Received 28 th September 2015 Accepted 20 th October 2015 Published 9 th November 2015 ABSTRACT The prevalent problem of air pollution in Nigeria is attributable to the country’s huge population, put in excess 160 million and the trend of industrial growth. In 2010, the country witnessed a rare occurrence of 9-day period of heavy dust episode (HDE). The dust reduced visibility to < 1 km, causing cancellation of several flights. The aim of this study is to assess the level of aerosol mass loadings and, nature and sources of the HDE aerosols. Two fractions of particulate matter (PM) were collected for about two months including the period of the HDE. Samples were collected on Whatman polycarbonate filters using low-volume GENT sampler equipped with a stacked filter unit (SFU) to hold two 47 mm filters. 7-day back trajectory analysis was performed using UGAMP trajectory model driven by ECMWF wind analyses data. Morphological analysis of the PM was Original Research Article