Publication Date:
2004-03-20
Description:
A transect of 68 acid grasslands across Great Britain, covering the lower range of ambient annual nitrogen deposition in the industrialized world (5 to 35 kg Nha-1 year-1), indicates that long-term, chronic nitrogen deposition has significantly reduced plant species richness. Species richness declines as a linear function of the rate of inorganic nitrogen deposition, with a reduction of one species per 4-m2 quadrat for every 2.5 kg Nha-1 year-1 of chronic nitrogen deposition. Species adapted to infertile conditions are systematically reduced at high nitrogen deposition. At the mean chronic nitrogen deposition rate of central Europe (17 kg Nha-1 year-1), there is a 23% species reduction compared with grasslands receiving the lowest levels of nitrogen deposition.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Stevens, Carly J -- Dise, Nancy B -- Mountford, J Owen -- Gowing, David J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Mar 19;303(5665):1876-9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. c.j.stevens@open.ac.uk〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15031507" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Air Pollution
;
Altitude
;
Atmosphere
;
*Biodiversity
;
Carbon/analysis
;
*Ecosystem
;
Great Britain
;
Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
;
*Nitrogen/analysis
;
*Plant Development
;
Poaceae/*growth & development
;
Soil/analysis
;
Temperature
;
Weather
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink
