Currently legislated decreases in nitrogen deposition will yield only limited plant species recovery in European forests

15648 9 86030 2 243979 document 86030 Dirnböck_2018_Environ._Res._Lett._13_125010.pdf application/pdf 488d806fd40613009f8262b9f18c5527 MD5 1038802 2018-12-19 11:02:38 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15648/1/Dirnb%C3%B6ck_2018_Environ._Res._Lett._13_125010.pdf 15648 1 1 application/pdf text en public cc_by_4

Dirnböck_2018_Environ._Res._Lett._13_125010.pdf

published 86031 2 243986 document 86031 lightbox.jpg image/png 5f8d7c257da94c1e60ddf8c7fcad4920 MD5 9492 2018-12-19 11:12:49 https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15648/2/lightbox.jpg 15648 2 2 image/png other Thumbnails conversion from text to thumbnail_lightbox en public

lightbox.jpg

preview.jpg

medium.jpg

small.jpg

indexcodes.txt

http://eprints.org/relation/isVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/86030 http://eprints.org/relation/isVolatileVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/86030 http://eprints.org/relation/isIndexCodesVersionOf https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/document/86030 archive 353 disk0/00/01/56/48 2018-12-19 11:07:04 2021-08-27 17:31:13 2018-12-19 11:07:04 article show Dirnböck T. Pröll G. Austnes K. Beloica J. Beudert B. Canullo R. De Marco A. Fornasier M. Futter M. Goergen K. Grandin U. Holmberg M. Lindroos A.-J. Mirtl M. Neirynck J. Pecka T. Nieminen T. Nordbakken J. Posch M. 6733 0000-0001-8649-9129 Reinds G. Rowe E. Salemaa M. Scheuschner T. Starlinger F. Uziębło A. Valinia S. Weldon J. Wamelink W. Forsius M. Currently legislated decreases in nitrogen deposition will yield only limited plant species recovery in European forests pub prog_air Atmospheric nitrogen (N) pollution is considered responsible for a substantial decline in plant species richness and for altered community structures in terrestrial habitats worldwide. Nitrogen affects habitats through direct toxicity, soil acidification, and in particular by favoring fast-growing species. Pressure from N pollution is decreasing in some areas. In Europe (EU28), overall emissions of NO x declined by more than 50% while NH3 declined by less than 30% between the years 1990 and 2015, and further decreases may be achieved. The timescale over which these improvements will affect ecosystems is uncertain. Here we use 23 European forest research sites with high quality long-term data on deposition, climate, soil recovery, and understory vegetation to assess benefits of currently legislated N deposition reductions in forest understory vegetation. A dynamic soil model coupled to a statistical plant species niche model was applied with site-based climate and deposition. We use indicators of N deposition and climate warming effects such as the change in the occurrence of oligophilic, acidophilic, and cold-tolerant plant species to compare the present with projections for 2030 and 2050. The decrease in N deposition under current legislation emission (CLE) reduction targets until 2030 is not expected to result in a release from eutrophication. Albeit the model predictions show considerable uncertainty when compared with observations, they indicate that oligophilic forest understory plant species will further decrease. This result is partially due to confounding processes related to climate effects and to major decreases in sulphur deposition and consequent recovery from soil acidification, but shows that decreases in N deposition under CLE will most likely be insufficient to allow recovery from eutrophication. 2018-12-17 published Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) 10.1088/1748-9326/aaf26b 3069 public Environmental Research Letters 13 12 e125010 TRUE 1748-9326 Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem & Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER,H2020 654359) FALSE yes info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/654359/EU/Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem & Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure/eLTER info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess