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Decreasing trends in acidic deposition levels over the past several decades have led to partial chemical recovery of surface waters. However, depletion of soil Ca from acidic deposition has slowed surface water recovery and led to the impairment of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Nevertheless, documentation of acidic deposition effects on soils has been limited, and little is known regarding soil responses to ongoing acidic deposition decreases. In this study, resampling of soils in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. was done at 27 sites exposed to reductions in wet SO4(2-) deposition of 5.7-76%, over intervals of 8-24 y. Decreases of exchangeable Al in the O horizon and increases in pH in the O and B horizons were seen at most sites. Among all sites, reductions in SO4(2-) deposition were positively correlated with ratios (final sampling/initial sampling) of base saturation (P < 0.01) and negatively correlated with exchangeable Al ratios (P < 0.05) in the O horizon. However, base saturation in the B horizon decreased at one-third of the sites, with no increases. These results are unique in showing that the effects of acidic deposition on North American soils have begun to reverse.

Prolonged suppression of cambial growth has apparently caused a decline in radial growth in many mature red spruce, Picea rubens. Surveys indicate that this decline occurs in trees throughout the natural range of red spruce and is independent of elevation, tree size, and age class. In addition, crowns of mature red spruce at high elevations across the northeastern United States have been dying back. Understanding the physiological basis for the growth decline is essential for the judicious management of the red spruce resource. A sequence of events is inferred through which an imbalance of aluminum and calcium in the fine root environment reduces the rate of wood formation, decreases the amount of functional sapwood and live crown, and leaves large trees more vulnerable to extant secondary diseases and insect pests.

We investigated the variability of the climate-growth relationship of Aleppo pine across its distribution range in the Mediterranean Basin. We constructed a network of tree-ring index chronologies from 63 sites across the region. Correlation function analysis identified the relationships of tree-ring index to climate factors for each site. We also estimated the dominant climatic gradients of the region using principal component analysis of monthly, seasonal, and annual mean temperature and total precipitation from 1,068 climatic gridpoints. Variation in ring width index was primarily related to precipitation and secondarily to temperature. However, we found that the dendroclimatic relationship depended on the position of the site along the climatic gradient. In the southern part of the distribution range, where temperature was generally higher and precipitation lower than the regional average, reduced growth was also associated with warm and dry conditions. In the northern part, where the average temperature was lower and the precipitation more abundant than the regional average, reduced growth was associated with cool conditions. Thus, our study highlights the substantial plasticity of Aleppo pine in response to different climatic conditions. These results do not resolve the source of response variability as being due to either genetic variation in provenance, to phenotypic plasticity, or a combination of factors. However, as current growth responses to inter-annual climate variability vary spatially across existing climate gradients, future climate-growth relationships will also likely be determined by differential adaptation and/or acclimation responses to spatial climatic variation. The contribution of local adaptation and/or phenotypic plasticity across populations to the persistence of species under global warming could be decisive for prediction of climate change impacts across populations. In this sense, a more complex forest dynamics modeling approach that includes the contribution of genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity can improve the reliability of the ecological inferences derived from the climate-growth relationships.

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Dendrochemical and biochemical markers link stress in apparently healthy red spruce trees (Picea rubens) to acidic deposition. Acidic deposition to spruce forests of the northeastern USA increased sharply during the 1960s. Previous reports related visible damage of trees at high elevations to root and soil processes. In this report, dendrochemical and foliar biochemical markers indicate perturbations in biological processes in healthy red spruce trees across the northeastern USA. Previous research on the dendrochemistry of red spruce stemwood indicated that under uniform environmental conditions, stemwood concentrations of Ca and Mg decreased with increasing radial distance from the pith. For nine forest locations, frequency analysis shows that 28 and 52% of samples of red spruce stemwood formed in the 1960s are enriched in Ca and Mg, respectively, relative to wood formed prior to and after the 1960s. This enrichment in trees throughout the northeastern USA may be interpretable as a signal of increased availability of essential cations in forest soils. Such a temporary increase in the availability of Ca and Mg could be caused by cation mobilization, a consequence of increased acidic deposition. During cation mobilization, essential Ca and Mg as well as potentially harmful Al become more available for interaction with binding sites in the soil and absorbing roots. As conditions which favor cation mobilization continue, Ca and Mg can be leached or displaced from the soil. A measure of the interaction between Ca and Al is the Al/Ca binding ratio (molar charge ratio of exchangeable Al to exchangeable Ca). As the Al/Ca binding ratio in the root zone increased from 0.3 to 1.9, the foliar concentration of the biochemical stress marker putrescine also increased from 45 to 145 nm g−1. The correlation of the putrescine concentration to the Al/Ca binding ratio (adj. r2 = 0.68, P < 0.027) suggests that foliar stress may be linked to soil chemistry.