Abstract
Current climate warming is expected to continue in coming decades, whereas high N deposition may stabilize, in contrast to the clear decrease in S deposition. These pressures have distinctive regional patterns and their resulting impact on soil conditions is modified by local site characteristics. We have applied the VSD+ soil dynamic model to study impacts of deposition and climate change on soil properties, using MetHyd and GrowUp as pre-processors to provide input to VSD+. The single-layer soil model VSD+ accounts for processes of organic C and N turnover, as well as charge and mass balances of elements, cation exchange and base cation weathering. We calibrated VSD+ at 26 ecosystem study sites throughout Europe using observed conditions, and simulated key soil properties: soil solution pH (pH), soil base saturation (BS) and soil organic carbon and nitrogen ratio (C:N) under projected deposition of N and S, and climate warming until 2100. The sites are forested, located in the Mediterranean, forested alpine, Atlantic, continental and boreal regions. They represent the long-term ecological research (LTER) Europe network, including sites of the ICP Forests and ICP Integrated Monitoring (IM) programmes under the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), providing high quality long-term data on ecosystem response. Simulated future soil conditions improved under projected decrease in deposition and current climate conditions: higher pH, BS and C:N at 21, 16 and 12 of the sites, respectively. When climate change was included in the scenario analysis, the variability of the results increased. Climate warming resulted in higher simulated pH in most cases, and higher BS and C:N in roughly half of the cases. Especially the increase in C:N was more marked with climate warming. The study illustrates the value of LTER sites for applying models to predict soil responses to multiple environmental changes.
Highlights
Current climate warming is expected to continue in coming decades, while high European nitrogen (N) deposition may stabilize, in contrast to the clear decrease in sulphur (S) deposition (Tørseth et al 2012, Waldner et al 2014, Fagerli et al 2016)
The coupled biogeochemical and vegetation community model Very Simple Dynamic (VSD)+Probability of Plant Species (PROPS) has been applied in the United States by McDonnell et al (2018), who found that historical changes in N deposition had pronounced impacts on simulated HSI, a biodiversity metric (Rowe et al 2016)
3 In this study we demonstrate an application of the VSD+ model (Bonten et al 2016), with its preprocessors MetHyd and GrowUp, to 26 ecosystem study sites throughout Europe
Summary
Current climate warming is expected to continue in coming decades, while high European nitrogen (N) deposition may stabilize, in contrast to the clear decrease in sulphur (S) deposition (Tørseth et al 2012, Waldner et al 2014, Fagerli et al 2016). The long-term impacts of N on vegetation and biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems have been identified (Bobbink et al 2010, Dirnböck et al 2014, Ferretti et al 2014) and are likely to continue unless deposition rates decline. Understanding and predicting ecosystem responses to 21st century environmental change requires the capacity to simulate the combined effects of different drivers on soils, vegetation and species diversity. Combined models that include soil and species responses may provide this capacity (De Vries et al 2010). The coupled biogeochemical and vegetation community model VSD+PROPS has been applied in the United States by McDonnell et al (2018), who found that historical changes in N deposition had pronounced impacts on simulated HSI, a biodiversity metric (Rowe et al 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call