A Novel Environmental Quality Criterion for Acidification in Swedish Lakes – An Application of Studies on the Relationship Between Biota and Water Chemistry |
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Authors: | Jens Fölster Cecilia Andrén Kevin Bishop Ishi Buffam Neil Cory Willem Goedkoop Kerstin Holmgren Richard Johnson Hjalmar Laudon Anders Wilander |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Environmental Assessment, SLU, Box 7050, 750 07, Uppsala, Sweden 2. Department of Applied Environmental Science, Stockholm University, ITM, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden 3. Department of Forest Ecology, SLU, 901 83, Ume?, Sweden 4. Forest Resource Management and Geomatics, SLU, Skogsmarksgr?nd, 901 83, Ume?, Sweden 5. National Board of Fisheries, 178 93, Drottningholm, Sweden 6. Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Ume? University, 901 87, Ume?, Sweden
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Abstract: | The recovery from acidification has led to the demand for more precise criteria for classification of acidification. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency has revised Sweden’s Ecological Quality Criteria for acidification to improve the correlation between the chemical acidification criteria and biological effects. This paper summarises the most relevant findings from several of the studies commissioned for this revision. The studies included data on water chemistry in 74 reference lakes in southern Sweden with data on fish in 61 of the lakes, as well as data on littoral fauna in 48 lakes. We found that the acidity variable most strongly correlated to the biota was the median pH from the current year. Our results probably do not reflect the mechanisms behind the negative effects of acidity on the biota, but are fully relevant for evaluation of monitoring data. The biogeochemical models used for predicting acidification reference conditions generate a pre-industrial buffering capacity. In order to get an ecologically more relevant criteria for acidification based on pH, we transferred the estimated change in buffering capacity into a corresponding change in pH. A change of 0.4 units was defined as the threshold for acidification. With this criterion a considerably lower number of Swedish lakes were classified as acidified when compared with the present Ecological Quality Criteria. |
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