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COMPARISON OF SELECTED CRITICAL LOADS ESTIMATION APPROACHES FOR ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF SULFATE DEPOSITION ON LAKES IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES
Citation:
Holdren, Jr., G., T. Strickland, B. Rosenbaum, R. Turner, P. Ryan, M. McDowell, G. Bishop, G. Griffith, K. Smythe, AND P. Ringold. COMPARISON OF SELECTED CRITICAL LOADS ESTIMATION APPROACHES FOR ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF SULFATE DEPOSITION ON LAKES IN THE NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/R-93/074.
Description:
Recent international agreements for controlling atmospheric pollutant emissions have been based on the use of target loads that, in turn, require countries to develop national estimates of critical loads--the highest deposition of acidifying compounds that will not cause chemical changes leading to long-term harmful effects on ecosystem structure and function according to present knowledge. ritical loads data are most commonly presented as maps that can be readily compared between nations. he United States has proposed a uniform generic framework that allows critical loads to be developed using a variety of methods for different geographic scales (e.g., region, subregion, or ecoregion). hat framework is used here to qualitatively compare the critical loads estimates obtained by different modeling and mapping methodologies designed to predict the effect of acidic sulfate deposition on lake chemistry. he objective off this report is not to provide recommendations of critical or target loads that should be adopted, but to show the relative effects of using different methodologies to estimate critical sulfate loads. his document examines some of the options currently available for estimating critical loads for acidic sulfate deposition to lakes and for mapping atmospheric deposition and ecosystem status and response.