PREDICTING RECOVERY IN ACIDIFIED FRESHWATERS BY THE YEAR 2010, AND BEYOND

Contract EVK1-1999-00087 - RECOVER:2010

Part of the 'Sustainable Management and Quality of Water'

Ecosystem Functioning

Directorate General Research

The James Hutton Institute

This page is no longer updated. The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute joined forces with SCRI on 1 April 2011 to create The James Hutton Institute.

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With new funding from RESAS as part of the Strategic Science Programme (2011-2016), long term projections of surface water acidification made to the year 2010 as part of the RECOVER:2010 were compared to observed chemistry.

In 1999, as part of the EU RECOVER:2010 project, the MAGIC (Model of Acidification of Groundwater In Catchments) model was used to project acidification of acid-sensitive European surface waters in the year 2010, given implementation of the Gothenburg Protocol to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP). A total of 202 sites in 10 regions in Europe were studied.

With new funding from RESAS, staff in the Managing Catchments and Coast group of the James Hutton Insitute compared the forecasts made during the RECOVER:2010 project with measurements for the year 2010, to give a “ground truth” evaluation of the model. To find out more about this study click here to access the paper published in Environmental Science and Technology.

References

Alewell, C. 1995. Sulfat-Dynamik in sauren Waldböden - Sorptionsverhalten und Prognose bei nachlassenden Depositionen. Bayreuther Forum Ökologie, 19, 1-187.

Alewell, C. 1998. Investigating sulfate sorption and desorption of acid forest soils with special consideration of soil structure. Z. Pflanzenernaehr. Bodenkd. 161:73-80.

Alewell, C., Bredemeier, M., Matzner, E., and Blanck, K. 1997. Soil solution response to experimentally reduced acid deposition in a forest ecosystem. J. Environ. Qual. 26:658-665.

Erkenberg, A. 1991. Schwefelausstattung europäischer Waldböden unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Adsorptionskapazitäten von Sulfat. Dissertation an der Universität München, 1-130.

Jungnickel, C. 1996. Heterogenität der Parameter von SO42- - Desorption isothermen im Einzugsgebiet Lehstenbach/Fichtelgebirge, Diplomarbeit an der Universität Bayreuth.

Malessa, V. 1995. Soil acidification gradients: Mode of development, status quo and classification. Water, Air, Soil Pollut. 84:303-321.

Manderscheid, B., Jungnickel, C. and Alewell, C. 1999a. Spatial heterogeneity of sulfate isotherms in forest soils at different scales and its implications for the modeling of soil sulfate fluxes. Biogeochemistry (submitted).

Manderscheid, B., Schweisser, T., Lischeid, G., Alewell, C. and Matzner, E. 1999b. Sulfate pools in the weathered substrata of a forested catchment. Soil Sci Soc. Am. J. (submitted).

Meiwes, K.J., Merino, A. and Fortmann, H. 1994. Acidification of deeper soil layers at the groundwater monitoring sites of Lower Saxony, Germany (in German). Ber. Forschungszentrum Waldökosysteme, University of Göttingen, Reihe B, Bd. 34.

Schweisser, T. 1998. Sulfat - Sorptionvermögen des geologischen Untergrundes im Wasserinzugsgebiet Lehstenbach - unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Tiefenversauerung. Diplomaebeit an der Universität Bayreuth.

PREDICTING RECOVERY IN ACIDIFIED FRESHWATERS BY THE YEAR 2010, AND BEYOND

The James Hutton Institute

THE REGIONS

RESULTS

References