References

HESS

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences

HESS

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

1607-7938

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/hess-12-371-2008

Climate control on sulphate and nitrate concentrations in alpine streams of Northern Italy along a nitrogen saturation gradient

Rogora

¹ Arese

² Balestrini

² Marchetto

CNR Institute of Ecosystem Study, 28922 Verbania Pallanza, Italy

CNR Water Research Institute, Department of Hydrobiology Applied to Water Pollution, 20047 Brugherio, Milan, Italy

05 03 2008

12 2 371 381

2008

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/

This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/12/371/2008/hess-12-371-2008.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/12/371/2008/hess-12-371-2008.pdf

The role of meteorology, hydrology and atmospheric deposition on the temporal pattern of SO4 and NO3 concentrations was investigated for three streams draining alpine catchments in Northern Italy. The study sites lie on a gradient of atmospheric fluxes of SO4 and NO3 (from about 50 to 80 meq m−2 y−1, and from 40 to 90 meq m−2 y−1, respectively). As a consequence of the increasing N input, the three catchments are also representative of aggrading levels of N saturation. Different methods of statistical analysis were applied to monthly data for the period 1997–2005 to identify which variables (temperature, precipitation, hydrology, SO4 and NO3 deposition) were the main predictors of water chemistry and its change in time. Hydrological changes and snow cover proved to be the main confounding factors in the response to atmospheric deposition in the River Masino catchment. Its particular characteristics (small catchment area, rapid flushing during runoff and thin soil cover) meant that this site responded without a significant delay to SO4 deposition decrease. It also showed a clear seasonal pattern of NO3 concentration, in response to hydrology and biological uptake in the growing season. The selected driving variables failed to model the water chemistry at the other study sites. Nevertheless, temperature, especially extreme values, turned out to be important in both SO4 and NO3 export from the catchments. This result might be largely explained by the effect of warm periods on temperature-dependent processes such as mineralization, nitrification and S desorption. Our findings suggest that surface waters in the alpine area will be extremely sensitive to a climate warming scenario: higher temperatures and increasing frequency of drought could exacerbate the effects of high chronic N deposition.

References 1

Aber, J. D. and Driscoll, C. T.: Effects of land use, climate variation and N deposition on N cycling and C storage in northern hardwood forests, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 11(4), 639–648, 1997.

Aber, J. D., Ollinger, S. V., Driscoll, C. T., Likens, G. E., Holmes, R. T., Freuder, R. J., and Goodale, C. L.: Inorganic nitrogen losses from a forested ecosystem in response to physical, chemical, biotic, and climatic perturbations, Ecosystems, 5, 648–658, 2002.

Ambrosetti, W., Barbanti, L., and Rolla, A.: The climate of Lago Maggiore area during the last 50 years, J. Limnol., 65(1), 62 pp., 2006.

Arthur, M. A. and Fahey, T. J.: Control on soil solution chemistry in a subalpine forest in North-Central Colorado, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 57, 1122–1130, 1993.

Balestrini, R. and Tagliaferri, A.: Atmospheric deposition and canopy exchange processes in alpine forest ecosystems (Northern Italy), Atmos. Environ., 35/36, 6421–6433, 2001.

Balestrini, R., Tagliaferri, A., Tartari, G., and Di Girolamo, F.: Forest condition and chemical characteristics of atmospheric depositions: research and monitoring network in Lombardy, in: Long-term ecological research in Italian forest ecosystems, edited by: Mosello, R., Petriccione, B., and Marchetto, A., J. Limnol., 61, 117–128, 2002.

Balestrini R., Di Martino, N., and Van Miegroet, H.: Nitrogen cycling and mass balance for a forested catchment in the Italian Alps, Biogeochemistry, 78, 97–123, 2006.

Brooks, P. D., Williams, M. W., and Schmidt, S. K.: Microbial activity under alpine snowpacks, Niwot Ridge, Colorado, Biogeochemistry, 32, 93–113, 1996.

Campbell, D. H., Clow, D. W., Ingersoll, G. P., Mast, M. A., Spahr, N. E., and Turk, J. T.: Processes controlling the chemistry of 2 snowmelt-dominated streams in the Rocky-Mountains, Water Resour. Res., 31, 2811–2821, 1995.

Cleveland, R. B., Cleveland, W. S., McRae, J. E., and Terpening, I.: STL: A Seasonal-Trend Decomposition Procedure Based on Loess, Journal of Official Statistics, 6, 3–73, 1990.

Creed, I. F., Band, L. E., Foster, N. W., Morrison, I. K., Nicolson, J. A., Semkin, R. S., and Jeffries, D. S.: Regulation of nitrate-N release from temperate forests: A test of the N flushing hypothesis, Water Resour. Res., 32, 3337–3354, 1996.

Edwards, A. C. and Cresser, M. S.: Freezing and its effect on chemical and biological properties of soil, Adv. Soil Sci., 18, 59–79, 1992.

Eimers, M. C. and Dillon, P. J.: Climate effects on sulphate flux from forested catchments in south-central Ontario, Biogeochemistry, 61, 337–355, 2002.

Evans, C. D., Cullen, J. M., Alewell, C., Kopácek, J., Marchetto, A., Moldan, F., Prechtel, A., Rogora, M., Vesel\'y, J., and Wright, R. F.: Recovery from acidification in European surface waters, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 5, 283–297, 2001.

Foster, N. W., Nicolson, J. A., and Hazlett, P. W.: Temporal variation in nitrate and nutrient cations in drainage waters from a deciduous forest, J. Environ. Quality, 18, 238–244, 1989.

Groffman, P. M., Hardy, J. P., Nolan, S., Driscoll, C. T., Fitzhugh, R. D., and Fahey, T. J.: Snow depth, soil frost and nutrient loss in a northern hardwood forest, Hydrol. Processes, 13, 2275–2286, 1999.

Haeberli, W. and Beniston, M.: Climate change and its impacts on glaciers and permafrost in the Alps, Ambio, 27, 258–265, 1998.

Hirsch, R. M., Slack, J. R., and Smith, R.: Techniques of trend analysis for monthly water quality data, Water Resour. Res., 18, 107–121, 1982.

Hirsch, R. M. and Slack, J. R.: A nonparametric trend test for seasonal data with serial dependence, Water Resour. Res., 20, 727–732, 1984.

IPCC, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in: Cambridge University Press, edited by: Houghton J. T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D. J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P. J., and Xiaosu, D., UK, 944 pp., 2001.

Likens, G. E., Borman, F. H., Pierce, R. S., Eaton, J. S., and Johnson, N. M.: Biogeochemistry of a forested watershed, Springer, New York, 1977.

Lükewille, A. and Wright, R. F.: Experimentally increased soil temperature causes release of nitrogen at a boreal forest catchment in southern Norway, Global Change Biol., 3, 13–21, 1997.

Mitchell, M. J., Driscoll, C. T., Kahl, J. S., Likens, G. E., Murdoch, P. S., and Pardo, L. H.: Climatic control of nitrate losses from forested watersheds in the Northeast United States, Environ. Sci. Technol., 30, 2609–2612, 1996.

Mitchell, M. J., Driscoll, C. T., Inamdar, S., Mcgee, G. G., Mbila, M. O., and Raynal, D. J.: Nitrogen biogeochemistry in the Adirondack Mountains of New York: hardwood ecosystems and associated surface waters, Environ. Pollut., 123, 355–364, 2003.

Mitchell, M. J., Piatek, K. B., Christopher, S., Mayer, B., Kendall, C., and Mchale, P.: Solute Sources in Stream Water during Consecutive Fall Storms in a Northern Hardwood Forest Watershed: A Combined Hydrological, Chemical and Isotopic Approach, Biogeochemistry, 78, 217–246, 2006.

Mosello, R., Calderoni, A., Marchetto, A., Brizzio, M. C., Rogora, M., Passera, S., and Tartari, G. A.: Nitrogen budget of Lago Maggiore: the relative importance of atmospheric deposition and catchment sources, J. Limnol., 60, 27–40, 2001.

Mosello, R., Marchetto, A., Brizzio, M. C., Tartari, G. A., and Rogora, M., Pluriannual evolution of the hydrochemistry of two alpine lakes (Lake Paione Inferiore and Lake Paione Superiore, Ossola Valley) in relation to atmospheric loads, J. Limnol., 58, 43–49, 1999.

Murdoch, P. S., Burns D. A., and Lawrence, G. B.: Relation of climate change to the acidification of surface waters by nitrogen deposition, Environ. Sci. Technol., 32, 1642–1647, 1998.

Prechtel, A., Alewell, C., Armbruster, M., Bittersohl, J., Cullen, J. M., Evans, C. D., Helliwell, R., Kopácek, J., Marchetto, A., Matzner, E., Meesenburg, H., Moldan, F., Moritz, K., Vesel\'y, J., and Wright, R. F.: Response of sulphur dynamics in European catchments to decreasing sulphate deposition, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 5, 311–325, 2001.

Reynolds, B., Emmett, B. A., and Woods, C.: Variations in streamwater nitrate concentrations and nitrogen budgets over 10 years in a headwater catchment in mid-Wales, J. Hydrol., 136, 155–75, 1992.

Rogora, M., Marchetto, A., and Mosello, R., Trends in the chemistry of atmospheric deposition and surface waters in the Lago Maggiore watershed, Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 5, 379–390, 2001.

Rogora, M., Mosello, R., Arisci, S., Brizzio, M. C., Barbieri, A., Balestrini, R., Waldner, P., Schmitt, M., Stähli, M., Thimonier, A., Kalina, M., Puxbaum, H., Nickus, U., Ulrich, E., and Probst, A.: Atmospheric deposition on the Alps: effects on the functioning of the alpine and subalpine ecosystems, Hydrobiologia, 562, 17–40, 2006.

Rogora, M. and Mosello, R.: Climate as a confounding factor in the response of surface water to nitrogen deposition in an area South of the Alps, Appl. Geochem., 22, 1122–1128, 2007.

Rogora, M., Arisci, S., and Mosello, R.: Recent trends of temperature and precipitation in alpine and subalpine areas in North Western Italy, Geografia Fisica e Dinamica Quaternaria, 27, 151–158, 2004.

Sen, P. K.: Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall's tau, J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 63, 1379–1389, 1968.

Sickman, J. O., Leydecker, A., Chang, C. Y., Kendall, C., Melack, J. M., Lucero, D. M., and Schimel, J.: Mechanisms underlying export of N from high-elevation catchments during seasonal transitions, Biogeochemistry, 57/58, 341–374, 2002.

Skjelkvåle, B. L., Stoddard, J., Jeffries, D., Tørseth, K., Høgåsen, T., Bowman, J., Mannio, J., Monteith, D., Mosello, R., Rogora, M., Rzychon, D., Vesely, J., Wieting, J., Wilander, A., and Worsztynowicz, A.: Regional scale evidence for improvements in surface water chemistry 1990–2001, Environ. Pollut., 137, 165–176, 2005.

Stark, J. M. and Hart, S. C.: High rates of nitrification and nitrate turnover in undisturbed coniferous forests, Nature, 385, 1–64, 1997.

Stoddard, J. and Traaen, T.: The stages of nitrogen saturation: classification of catchments included in "ICP on Waters", in: Mapping and modelling of critical loads for nitrogen: a workshop report, edited by: Hornung, M., Stutton, M. A., and Wilson, R. B., Proceedings of a workshop held in Grange-over-sands (UK), 24–26 October 1994, 69–76, 1994.

Stottlemeyer, R.: Stream water chemistry in watersheds receiving different atmospheric inputs of H$^+$, NH$_4^+$ , NO$_3^-$, and SO$_4^2-$, J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc., 33, 767–779, 1997.

Van Breemen, N., Jenkins, A., Wright, R. F., Beerling, D. J., Arp, W. J., Berendse, F., Beier, C., Collins, R., van Dam, D., Rasmussen, L., Verburg, P. S. J., and Wills, M. A.: Impacts of Elevated Carbon Dioxide and Temperature on a Boreal Forest Ecosystem (CLIMEX Project), Ecosystems, 1, 345–351, 1998.

Weaver, T. and Forcella, F.: Seasonal variation in soil nutrients under six Rocky Mountain vegetation types, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J., 43, 589–593, 1979.

Wright, R. F.: Effect of Increased Carbon Dioxide and Temperature on Runoff Chemistry at a Forested Catchment in Southern Norway (CLIMEX Project), Ecosystems, 1, 216–225, 1998.