Acid Deposition at High Elevation Sites

There is no shortage of general books on the subject of acid rain, or of symposium proceedings reviewing work ranging from atmospheric chemistry and deposition processes to freshwater acidification and effects on vegetation. In contrast, the collection of papers from this Workshop is focussed on a much smaller subject, the processes of acid deposition at high altitude sites. Interest in deposition at high elevation sites comes largely from observed vertical gradients in the degree of forest damage at sites in the Federal Republic of Germany and the eastern United States. These gradients show that damage to Norway spruce and fir increases with altitude at sites in Bavaria and the Black Forest, and that Red spruce are declining at high elevation sites in the Appalachian Mountains. With the large scale of scientific interest in forest decline, cany research groups, during the last five years, have been examining atmospheric chemistry, deposition processes, and effects on vegetation and soils at upland sites. In particular there have been many recent studies of cloud and precipitation chemistry, which show much larger concentrations of all ions in cloud water than in rain or snow. These studies have also shown that processes of wet and dry deposition and also the chemistry of the air at hill tops are modified strongly by orographic effects.