Abstract
Nitrogen deposition has a beneficial or adverse effect on the provision of several forest ecosystem services, depending on the level of nitrogen deposition and the service considered. Biodiversity and water quality regulation are much more sensitive to increasing nitrogen deposition levels than wood production and carbon sequestration. Beyond a certain threshold, however, effects of nitrogen deposition on forest ecosystem services are always negative. This threshold is currently exceeded in much of Central Europe, eastern US and China. Estimates of the contribution of nitrogen to global forest carbon sequestration indicate that elevated nitrogen deposition is responsible for approximately 10–20% of the global terrestrial carbon sink. In areas with persisting high levels of nitrogen deposition forests can become saturated with nitrogen, which represents a risk to the permanence of this service in those areas.
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de Vries, W., Schulte-Uebbing, L. (2019). Impacts of Nitrogen Deposition on Forest Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity. In: Schröter, M., Bonn, A., Klotz, S., Seppelt, R., Baessler, C. (eds) Atlas of Ecosystem Services. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96229-0_29
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