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Uncertainties in Large Scale Assessments of Critical Load Exceedances

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Water, Air and Soil Pollution: Focus

Abstract

In the 1999 Gothenburg protocol to the UN/ECE LRTAP Convention andin the negotiations for an EU acidification strategy the area withexceedances of critical loads has been the preferred measure forenvironmental impacts. The aim of this study has been to assessthe influence of the uncertainty and spatial variation of both thecritical loads and deposition values on the calculated area withexceedances of critical loads. This has been done on a nationalscale for Denmark and on the European scale based on the dataincluded in the RAINS model. It is demonstrated that includinguncertainty and spatial variation in exceedance calculations, ingeneral gives larger exceeded area for the critical load ofacidity, CL(A). The picture for the critical load of nutrientnitrogen, CLnut(N), is more mixed because of the higherproportion of exceeded areas. A further point of interest is thepossibility of validating relationships between critical loadexceedances and observable damage based on large scale monitoringand model data. It is demonstrated that it will probably not bepossible to use exceedance calculations on European scale as basisfor validation exercises, linking exceedances to observable damage.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Terrestrial Ecology, National Environmental Research Institute, Silkeborg, Denmark, 8920 1414)

    Jesper Bak

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  1. Jesper Bak
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Correspondence to Jesper Bak.

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Bak, J. Uncertainties in Large Scale Assessments of Critical Load Exceedances. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution: Focus 1, 265–280 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011534628213

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