Nutrient fluxes in pure and mixed stands of spruce (Picea abies) and beech (Fagus sylvatica)

Abstract

Studies on the combined effects of beechspruce mixtures are very rare. Hence, forest nutrition (soil, foliage) and nutrient fluxes via litterfall, throughfall (+ stemflow) and soil solution were measured in adjacent stands of pure spruce, mixed spruce-beech and pure beech on a nutrient rich site at Kreisbach, as well as in adjacent spruce and mixed stands on a nutrient poor site at Frauschereck to evaluate the impact of tree species composition (spruce versus beech) on these parameters. The highest recorded throughfall (+ stemflow) fluxes were 22.4 kg N ha −1 and 9.6 kg S ha −1 yr −1 and increased from beech over the mixed to the spruce stand at Kreisbach, but were similar for both stands at Frauschereck. At Frauschereck, atmospheric inputs were more or less reflected in element outputs, slightly modified by tree species composition. At Kreisbach, there was hardly any linkage between nutrient inputs and outputs. Our overall conclusion is that tree species composition affects forest nutrition, atmospheric input and consequently soil solution chemistry and inputoutput budgets of nutrients. However, these effects are site specific and dependent on the studied chemical element and process.

Seasonal variations of throughfall chemistry in pure and mixed stands of Oriental beech (Fagus orientalis Lipsky) in Hyrcanian forests (Iran)

“…The simple extrapolation method by weighting by the number of days resulted in somewhat lower but on the whole similar fluxes (Table 2) -N estimated in this study were within the range of typical values for temperate European beech forests (e.g., Berger et al 2009b;Thimonier et al 2005). Even though our estimated throughfall flux of Ca 2+ was rather low in comparison to other findings in the literature, Berger et al (2009b) found similar low values.…”

“…Even though our estimated throughfall flux of Ca 2+ was rather low in comparison to other findings in the literature, Berger et al (2009b) found similar low values. The estimated throughfall flux of K + , on the other hand, was rather high in comparison to values in Parker (1983), Thimonier et al (2005) and Hojjati et al (2009).…”

Contents of nutrients and arsenic in litterfall and surface humus in mature nudal beech stands subjected to different emission-immission loads

“…The K content in our beech litterfall was much higher than those recorded by Kavvadias et al (2001) in northern Greece, but approximately equal to the K content in fir litterfall reported by the same author. On the other hand, Berger et al (2009) found K content 1.5 times higher than our results indicate. Potassium is not a structural component of plant litter and it is removed by physical leaching (Swank, 1986).…”

Exchange of reactive nitrogen compounds: concentrations and fluxes of total ammonium and total nitrate above a spruce canopy

“…All of the studies, with which we compared our results, were conducted above/in spruce forest. Rothe et al (2002) and Berger et al (2008Berger et al ( , 2009) compared deposition loads between beech, mixed and spruce forests and found enhanced acid deposition in the spruce forests due to the more efficiently scavenging of the coniferous canopies, which is also reflected in higher seepage rates of NO 3 . The high surface to volume ratio of the canopy may thus also enhance dry deposition.…”

“…Throughfall, often used in forestry studies (Lovett and Lindberg, 1984;Berger et al, 2008;Hovmand and Andersen, 1995), may be regarded as the sum of wet and dry deposition and canopy exchange, as throughfall is the sum of direct precipitation, wash off of formerly dry deposited material and exchange processes within the canopy (Lovett and Lindberg, 1984). Dry deposition estimates from throughfall measurements are very controversial, particularly for those species that potentially interact with the canopy (NH + 4 and NO − 3 ) (Lovett et al, 1996;Berger et al, 2009), but they are still often used as reasonable estimates (van Breemen and van Dijk, 1988). Micrometeorological methods, like the eddy covariance method have advantages such as the capability to directly measure the dry deposition flux, spatial representativeness and high temporal resolution.…”