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New York City (NYC) is presently in violation of the nation's PM2.5 annual mass standard, and will have to take actions to control the sources contributing to these violations. This paper seeks to differentiate the impact of long-range transported aerosols on the air quality of downtown NYC, so that the roles of local sources can more clearly be evaluated. Past source apportionment studies have considered single sites individually in their source apportionment analyses to identify and determine sources affecting that site, often finding secondary sulfates to be an important contributor, but not being able to quantify the portion that is transported vs. local. In this study, a rural site located in Sterling Forest, NY, which is near to the NYC area, but unaffected by local NYC sources, is instead used as a reference to separate the portion of the aerosol that is transported to our Manhattan, NYC site before conducting the source apportionment analysis. Sterling Forest is confirmed as a background site via elemental comparisons with NYC during regional transport episodes of Asian and Sahara sandstorm dusts, as well as by comparisons with a second background site in Chester, NJ. Two different approaches that incorporate Sterling Forest background data into the NYC source apportionment analysis are then applied to quantify local vs. transported aerosols. Six source categories are identified for NYC: regional transported sulfate, trans-continental desert dust, traffic, residual oil, "local" dust and World Trade Center fires pollution. Of these, the transported sulfates and trans-continental desert dust accounted for nearly half of the total PM2.5 mass in Manhattan during 2001, with more than half coming from these transported sources during the summer months. More than 90% of the Manhattan elemental carbon was found to be of local origins. Conversely, roughly 90% of the NYC sulfate mass was identified as transported into the city. Our results indicate that transported pollution has a major role in NYC's fine PM pollution. Reliably meeting the ambient PM2.5 air quality standards in New York will require that upwind sources, outside of the city, will also need to be controlled. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.