EGU25-19141, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19141
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Long-term variations in nitrate leaching from ICP Forests Level II plots
Peter Waldner1, Stephan Raspe2, Stefan Fleck3, Lothar Zimmermann2, Paul Schmidt-Walter4, Carmen Iacoban5, Bruno De Vos6, Nathalie Cools6, Heleen Deroo6, Elena Vanguelova7, Zoran Galic8, Athanassios Bourletsikas9, Henning Meesenburg3, Tim Schütt10, Lena Wohlgemuth10, Kai Schwärzel10, Katrin Meusburger1, and Tiina Nieminen11
Peter Waldner et al.
  • 1Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Birmensdorf, Switzerland (peter.waldner@wsl.ch)
  • 2Bavarian State Institute for Forestry, Freising, Germany
  • 3Northwest German Forest Research Station, Goettingen, Germany
  • 4German Weather Service DWD, Braunschweig, Germany
  • 5National Research and Development Institute in Forestry, Romania
  • 6Research Institute for Nature and Forests, Geraardsbergen, Belgium
  • 7Forest Research Alice Holt Lodge, Farnham, UK
  • 8University Novi Sad, Serbia
  • 9Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems, Athens, Greece
  • 10Thuenen Institute, Eberswalde, Germany
  • 11LUKE, Helsinki, Finland

Forests in Europe have been exposed to an increase in atmospheric deposition of nitrogen in the second half of the 20th century that potentially lead to nitrogen saturation and elevated leaching of nitrogen from forest soils potentially impacting water quality of drinking water resources. Nitrogen dynamics of forests, however, are complexe and still not fully understood.

Atmospheric deposition, soil solution, meteorology, soils, as well as stand and site characteristics have been continuously measured and analysed at several hundred intensive monitoring plots of the Level II plot network of the International Cooperative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests for many years.

We used the hydrological model LWFBrook90R to calculate water fluxes through the soils of these sites and calculated nitrogen input with atmospheric deposition and output fluxes with percolating soil water. We found high long-term variations on parts of the plots. Some of these variation patterns are in the time range of changes in the tree stands, e.g. mortality and subsequent biomass decomposition. We will discuss relations of found nitrate leaching patterns with nitrogen saturation indicators suggested in literature. 

How to cite: Waldner, P., Raspe, S., Fleck, S., Zimmermann, L., Schmidt-Walter, P., Iacoban, C., De Vos, B., Cools, N., Deroo, H., Vanguelova, E., Galic, Z., Bourletsikas, A., Meesenburg, H., Schütt, T., Wohlgemuth, L., Schwärzel, K., Meusburger, K., and Nieminen, T.: Long-term variations in nitrate leaching from ICP Forests Level II plots, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-19141, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-19141, 2025.