Simulation of future stream alkalinity under changing deposition and climate scenarios

Abstract

Models of soil and stream water acidification have typically been applied under scenarios of changing acidic deposition, however, climate change is usually ignored. Soil air CO 2 concentrations have potential to increase as climate warms and becomes wetter, thus affecting soil and stream water chemistry by initially increasing stream alkalinity at the expense of reducing base saturation levels on soil exchange sites. We simulate this change by applying a series of physically based coupled models capable of predicting soil air CO 2 and stream water chemistry. We predict daily stream water alkalinity for a small catchment in the Virginia Blue Ridge for 60 years into the future given stochastically generated daily climate values. This is done for nine different combinations of climate and deposition. The scenarios for both climate and deposition include a static scenario, a scenario of gradual change, and a scenario of abrupt change. We find that stream water alkalinity continues to decline for all scenarios (average decrease of 14.4 μeq L − 1) except where climate is gradually warming and becoming more moist (average increase of 13 μeq L − 1). In all other scenarios, base cation removal from catchment soils is responsible for limited alkalinity increase resulting from climate change. This has implications given the extent that acidification models are used to establish policy and legislation concerning deposition and emissions.