Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

Critical loads of acidity to surface waters: An empirical diatom-based palaeolimnological model

Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Professor Steve Juggins

Downloads

Full text for this publication is not currently held within this repository. Alternative links are provided below where available.


Abstract

Attempts to reverse surface water acidification over large areas of Europe and North America require major reductions in the emission of sulfur dioxide from fossil-fuel combustion plants. The second sulfur protocol recently signed in Oslo (June 1994) is based on a 'critical loads' approach(1) to emission reduction. In this approach sulfur dioxide reductions are calculated according to the need to reduce acid deposition at sensitive acidified sites to below a threshold, or critical load, where ecological 'damage' should not occur (1,2). Using our large dataset of inferred acidification profiles from dated lake sediment cores throughout the UK (3- 5), we have developed an empirical model based on a dose-response function that can be used to set critical load values for a site from a knowledge of the ratio of Ca++ of the water (sensitivity) to modelled S deposition (loading) at the site. This diatom model is most suited to setting the baseline critical load for a site as, in theory, it identifies the first point of biological change in the acidification of an aquatic ecosystem and, unlike the steady-state water chemistry model, it is not dependent on the fixing of a threshold ANC value for a waterbody. We compare the use of both models in the generation of critical-load maps for the UK.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Battarbee R, Allott T, Juggins S, Kreiser A, Curtis C, Harriman R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Ambio

Year: 1996

Volume: 25

Issue: 5

Pages: 366-369

Print publication date: 01/08/1996

ISSN (print): 0044-7447

ISSN (electronic): 1654-7209


Share