Resilience of upland soils to long term environmental changes

Sammanfattning

The effect of long-term changes in land-use, pollution deposition and climate change on upland soils was evaluated by resurveying a large set of sites in a mountain landscape in the UK, which were initially sampled forty years ago. Unexpectedly, despite the length of time between sampling dates, no significant changes in pH, soil exchangeable base cations or C and N percentage content by weight were observed across a range of soil type and parent material. This suggests that the soils have been relatively resistant to the large changes in the environmental pressures experienced in the past forty years, which include a 1.5 degrees C increase in mean temperature; the peak of UK sulphur deposition in around 1970, followed by similar to 90% deposition reduction; long-term increases in nitrogen deposition; and major changes in grazing intensity. These results suggest that upland soils may be considerably more resilient to the future environmental changes than many previous assessments have suggested. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Nyckelord

Climate change; Nitrogen; Grazing; Land use; Atmospheric pollution; Soil chemistry

Publicerad i

Geoderma
2013, volym: 197, sidor: 36-42
Utgivare: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

SLU författare

• Evans, Christopher

  • Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)

UKÄ forskningsämne

Markvetenskap

Publikationens identifierare

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2012.12.018

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/89037