Lake acidification and the land-use hypothesis: a mid-post-glacial analogue
Abstract
It has been suggested that the recent acidification of lakes owes more to catchment soil acidification than to acid deposition. This can be tested by assessing the effect of catchment soil changes on lake acidity during earlier periods of post-glacial time, when acid deposition can be assumed to have been minimal. In the United Kingdom the mid-post-glacial formation of blanket mires in the catchments of lakes senstive to acidification provides a suitable analogue. Here we use the results of a pollen and diatom study of a sediment core from a recently acidified lake in Galloway, south-west Scotland3, to show that the lake was acid (pH 5.5-6.0) before peat formation and that no acidification occurred while peat was developing in the catchment. Acidification to pH values <5 occurs only after AD 1850, during the period of increasing acid emissions from fossil fuel combustion. We conclude that soil acidification is not the likely cause of the very low pH values found in many acidified lakes today.
- Publication:
-
Nature
- Pub Date:
- July 1986
- DOI:
- 10.1038/322157a0
- Bibcode:
- 1986Natur.322..157J