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Long-term trends in catchment organic carbon and nitrogen exports from three acidified catchments in Nova Scotia, Canada

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Abstract

We sampled two streams in southwestern Nova Scotia from 1983 to 2004 and one stream from 1992 to 2004 for total organic carbon (TOC) and nitrogen (TN) in order to investigate if changes in catchment exports could be determined over the sampling periods, and if so what were the controlling factors. We first show that early TOC measurements underestimated concentrations due to analytical shortcomings and then produce a correction to adjust values to more accurate levels. Our trend results showed that TOC concentrations decreased in the two streams with the longest record, from 1980 to 1992 when acid deposition to the area decreased most rapidly, and have remained constant since then. TOC exports only decreased at one site over the total sampling period. As expected, we also measured seasonal changes in exports, with the autumn period showing TOC and TN exports as high as during spring snowmelt. We found that only 24% of deposition N is exported from the larger catchments, most of it in organic form, while the smallest catchment exported 16%. We also show a constant increase in TN from 1994 to the present at all three sites sampled. Our results do not support the hypothesis that reductions in sulfur acidification lead to increases in catchment organic carbon mobilization to streams.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Floyd Luxton and Debbie Veinot for their excellent work sampling precipitation and water for so many years. Dr. Paul Arp of the University of New Brunswick provided modeled runoff values for Pine Marten Brook. We also thank the staff of the Environment Canada laboratory facility in Moncton, NB for their analytical work. The manuscript was greatly improved by comments from Dr. Tim Moore and two anonymous reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment Canada, P.O. Box 6227, Sackville, NB, Canada

    T. A. Clair & I. F. Dennis

  2. Environment Canada, 4905 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M3H 5T4

    R. Vet

  3. Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Umeå University, Umea, Sweden

    H. Laudon

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  1. T. A. Clair
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  2. I. F. Dennis
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  3. R. Vet
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  4. H. Laudon
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Correspondence to T. A. Clair.

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Clair, T.A., Dennis, I.F., Vet, R. et al. Long-term trends in catchment organic carbon and nitrogen exports from three acidified catchments in Nova Scotia, Canada. Biogeochemistry 87, 83–97 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-007-9170-7

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