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Monitoring nitrogen deposition in typical forest ecosystems along a large transect in China

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Abstract

The nitrogen (N) deposition fluxes were investigated in eight typical forest ecosystems along the North–South Transect of Eastern China (NSTEC; based on the ChinaFLUX network) by ion-exchange resin (IER) columns from May 2008 to April 2009. Our results demonstrated that the method of IER columns was both labor cost saving and reliable for measuring dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) deposition at the remote forest stations. The deposition of DIN in the throughfall ranged from 1.3 to 29.5 kg N ha−1 a−1, increasing from north to south along NSTEC. The relatively high average ratio of ammonium to nitrate in deposition (1.83) indicated that the N deposition along the NSTEC in China mostly originated in farming and animal husbandry rather than in industry and vehicle activities. For seasonal variability, the DIN deposition showed a single peak in the growing season in the northern part of NSTEC, while, in the southern part, it exhibited double-peaks in the early spring and the mid-summer, respectively. On the annual scale, the DIN deposition variations of the eight sites could be mainly explained by precipitation and the distances from forest stations to provincial capital cities.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the staff in Dinghushan, Qiangyanzhou, Huitong, Dagangshan, Changbaishan, Maoershan, Genhe, and Huzhong forest ecosystem research stations for access and permission to their study sites. We also would like to thank the staff of these stations for their assistance in the field. We are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This study was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (no. 2010CB833504), the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program Grant (no. XDA05050601), and the Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31100356, 30590381, and 41105114). We gratefully acknowledge David C. Brill for his revisions on language expressions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

    Wenping Sheng, Guirui Yu & Yunfen Liu

  2. Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Chunming Jiang, Silong Wang & Junhui Zhang

  3. South China Botany Garden, Chinese Academy of Science, Guangzhou, 510650, People’s Republic of China

    Junhua Yan

  4. Institute of Forest Ecology Environment and Protection, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, 100091, People’s Republic of China

    Bing Wang

  5. College of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, 150040, People’s Republic of China

    Chuankuan Wang

  6. College of Ecology and Environmental Science, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, 010019, People’s Republic of China

    Mei Zhou

  7. Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, People’s Republic of China

    Bingrui Jia

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  1. Wenping Sheng
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  2. Guirui Yu
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  9. Chuankuan Wang
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Correspondence to Guirui Yu.

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Sheng, W., Yu, G., Jiang, C. et al. Monitoring nitrogen deposition in typical forest ecosystems along a large transect in China. Environ Monit Assess 185, 833–844 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-012-2594-0

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