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Abstract

Criteria are needed for distinguishing naturally acid water from that acidified by air pollution, especially in the organic-rich waters of northern Sweden. The Steady-State Water Chemistry Model (SSWC) was augmented to include organic acidity so that it could predict pre-industrial pH in organic-rich waters. The resulting model predictions of pre-industrial ANC and pH were then tested against diatom predictions of pre-industrial pH and alkalinity in 58 lakes from N. Sweden (after alkalinity was converted to ANC using the CBALK method).The SSWC Model's predictions of pre-industrial lake pH in N. Sweden did not correspond well with the diatom predictions, even when accounting for the uncertainty in the diatom model. This was due to the SSWC's sensitivity to short-term fluctuations in contemporary water chemistry. Thus the SSWC Model is not suitable for judging the acidification of individual lakes in areas such as northern Sweden where the degree of chronic acidification is small, or without a good average value of contemporary water chemistry. These results should be considered when assessing the accuracy of critical loads calculated using SSWC. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

Critical loads; Diatoms; Pre-industrial conditions; Steady-state water chemistry model; Surface water acidification

Published in

Science of the Total Environment
2008, volume: 407, number: 1, pages: 723-729

SLU Authors

Global goals (SDG)

SDG6 Clean water and sanitation

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences and Nature Conservation
Fish and Aquacultural Science
Economics and Business

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2008.10.007

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/23587