Abstract
Since the 1980s a variety of biogeochemical catchment studies have been set up to investigate the cycling of water and solutes. Groundwater and streams have been sampled to investigate the dominant processes of solute turnover in the subsoil and to monitor their long-term changes. Usually a variety of processes interact partly in a highly non-linear manner. Consequently, identifying the dominant processes is not an easy task. In this study, a non-linear variant of the principal component analysis was used to identify the dominant processes in groundwater and streamwater of two forested catchments in the East Bavarian–West Bohemian crystalline basement. The catchments are approximately 60 km apart, but exhibit similar bedrock, soils, climate, land use, and atmospheric deposition history. Both have been monitored since the end of the 1980s until today, that is, during a period of dramatic decrease of atmospheric deposition of sulfur and accompanying base cations. Time series of component scores at different sites were investigated. Non-linear long-term trends were determined using a low-pass filter based on a Lomb–Scargle spectrum analysis.
The first four components accounted for 94% of the variance of the data set. The component scores could be interpreted as quantitative measures of biogeochemical processes. Among these, redox processes played a dominant role even in apparently oxic parts of the aquifers. Low-pass filtered time series of the component scores showed consistent, although mostly, non-linear trends in both catchments.
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Acknowledgments
Parts of the Lehstenbach data were kindly provided by Jochen Bittersohl, Klaus Moritz, and Uwe Wunderlich from the former Bavarian Water Resources Agency, now Bavarian Environmental Agency. Most of the Lehstenbach water samples were taken by Andreas Kolb and were analyzed in the Central Laboratory of BayCEER (former BITÖK) directed by Gunter Ilgen, which is highly appreciated. Most of the Lysina water samples were taken by Václav Kmínek from Kladská. Chemical analyses were performed in the Central Laboratories of the Czech Geological Survey, Prague.
A large fraction of the Lehstenbach monitoring program was financed by the German Ministry for Education and Research, Grant No. PT BEO 51 – 0339476 A-D, and by the German Research Foundation, Grant No. LI 802/2-2. Additional support for the Lysina data evaluation was provided by the 6th Framework EU project EUROLIMPACS (GOCE-CT-2003-505540) and by the research plan of the Czech Geological Survey (MZP0002579801).
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Lischeid, G., Krám, P., Weyer, C. (2010). Tracing Biogeochemical Processes in Small Catchments Using Non-linear Methods. In: Müller, F., Baessler, C., Schubert, H., Klotz, S. (eds) Long-Term Ecological Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8782-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8782-9_16
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