Black spruce boreal forest soil solution inorganic nitrogen is highly resilient to 20 years of elevated nitrogen deposition

Abstract

Soil solution is the liquid phase of soil containing nutrients that are essential for vegetation’s health and growth. As such, soil solution chemistry is directly related to nutrient cycling and productivity in forest ecosystems. However, the long-term impacts of elevated N deposition on boreal forest soil solution composition remain uncertain. In this study, we investigate the effects of two decades of ammonium nitrate addition applied at rates of 3 (LN treatment) and 10 (HN treatment) times the ambient N deposition on soil solution collected weekly during the snow-free period at a black spruce boreal forest site located in eastern Canada. We show that N addition corresponding to 60 years (LN treatment) and 200 years (HN treatment) of accelerated ambient N deposition had nearly no important nor lasting impacts on soil solution NO₃⁻ and NH₄⁺ concentrations. This reveals that N deposition will most likely not significantly impact Canadian boreal forests soil solution inorganic N concentration in the future. Based on these results and along with NOx emissions data measured globally in North America and on NO₃–N deposition recorded at our experimental forest site, it is also likely that N deposition never affected Canadian forests’ soil chemistry in the past, even at the peak of N emission in North America in the 70 s. Our results indicate a surprisingly strong and widespread resilience of the eastern Canadian boreal forest soil solution chemistry and inorganic N content to long-term N deposition. This resilience can be partially explained by an important N-limitation in high-latitude forest ecosystems.