Nitrogen deposition budget for a southern Appalachian deciduous forest

John Walker1, Xi Chen2, Donna Schwede3, Ryan Daly4, Aleksandra Djurkovic5, A. Christopher Oishi6, Zhiyong Wu7, Eric Edgerton8, Jennifer Knoepp9, Melissa Puchalski10 and Chelcy F. Miniat11

Assessment of critical load exceedances for nutrients requires complete and accurate atmospheric deposition budgets for reactive nitrogen (Nr). The exceedance is the total amount of Nr deposited to the ecosystem in excess of the critical load, which is the amount of Nr input below which harmful effects do not occur. Total deposition includes all forms of Nr (i.e., organic and inorganic) deposited to the ecosystem by wet and dry pathways.  Total deposition budgets, which may be developed from measurements, models, or a combination of the two, are often incomplete due to lack of consideration of organic forms of Nr. Reliance on models for estimating the dry deposited fraction is another important source of uncertainty.  Here we present results from the Southern Appalachian Nitrogen Deposition Study (SANDS) in which a combination of measurements and field-scale modeling is used to develop a complete annual (2015) Nr deposition budget for a mixed deciduous forest at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory in southern Appalachia.  Wet deposition of ammonium, nitrate, nitrite, and bulk organic N were measured directly.  The dry deposited Nr fraction was estimated using a bidirectional resistance-based model driven with speciated measurements of Nr air concentrations (e.g., ammonia, ammonium aerosol, nitric acid, nitrate aerosol, bulk organic N in aerosol, total alkyl nitrates, and total peroxy nitrates), micrometeorology, canopy structure, and biogeochemistry.  Wet deposition dominated the annual budget, contributing 66% of total deposition.  Approximately 50% of the total (wet + dry) budget was contributed by reduced forms of Nr (NHx = ammonia + ammonium), with oxidized and organic forms of Nr contributing ~ 40% and 10%, respectively. The dry deposited fraction comprised ~ 59% NHx, with oxidized and organic Nr contributing ~ 32% and 9%, respectively.  Total annual deposition was ~ 7.0 kg N ha-1 yr-1, which is on the upper end of Nr critical load estimates recently developed for similar ecosystems in nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Our results indicate that reductions in NHx deposition would be needed to achieve the lowest estimates (~ 3.0 kg N ha-1 yr-1) of Nr critical loads in southern Appalachian forests.

 

1US EPA, walker.johnt@epa.gov
2US EPA, chen.xi@epa.gov
3US EPA, schwede.donna@epa.gov
4US EPA, daly.ryan@epa.gov
5US EPA, djurkovic.aleksandra@epa.gov
6USDA Forest Service, andrew.c.oishi@usda.gov
7US EPA, wu.zhiyong@epa.gov
8ARA, Inc., eedgerton@atmospheric-research.com
9USDA Forest Service, jennifer.knoepp@usda.gov
10US EPA, puchalski.melissa@epa.gov
11USDA Forest Service, chelcy.f.miniat@usda.gov