Abstract

Keywords

Atmospheric deposition, Throughfall, Precipitation, Canopy exchange processes, Spatial variability, Temporal variability, Trends

Abstract

Atmospheric deposition is an important source of macro- and micronutrients to the forest and also the most important channel for input of long-range air pollutants. This chapter describes the methods used for the determination of atmospheric deposition, especially in rain and snow, in forest ecosystems, including samplers for open-field bulk precipitation, throughfall, and stemflow. These measurements can be used to quantify deposition to forests, to evaluate trends in pollutant inputs, and as inputs to modeling of canopy exchange processes, acidification and eutrophication. A major difficulty in throughfall measurement is high spatial and temporal variations, so that great care must be taken to ensure that samples are representative for the forest stand. Care must also be taken to minimize chemical and biological transformations in the samples. Deposition measurements have contributed to policy development and will continue to do so.

LWF Classification

Network: LWF, Category: peer-reviewed,