Cary throughfall data 1992 to 1999

The Forest Response to Stress and Damage (frequently referred to as FORSTAD) and long term forest monitoring project began in 1992 to study how mixed-oak forests respond to multiple forms of environmental change. The research took place at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in the Hudson Valley of New York. FORSTAD included several sub-projects including (1) air pollution and nutrient cycling dynamics, (2) spongy moth dynamics, (3) small mammal dynamics and (4) vegetation dynamics. This dataset is a contribution to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and is part of the Long term monitoring of forest ecosystems: air pollution and nutrient cycling dynamics archive.

To understand the effects of air pollution on forests, the chemistry of the precipitation as it fell onto and through the forest was measured. In addition, the chemistry of the soil where tree roots grew as well as the chemistry of leaves were measured. Lastly, to understand how the microbes in soil were affected by pollution, the breakdown of plant material into nitrogen that could be taken up by tree roots was measured. This latter process is called nitrogen cycling or nitrogen mineralization. The measurements included throughfall amount and chemistry, soil solution amount and chemistry, foliar chemistry, litterfall and frassfall amount and carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) concentration, potential N mineralization and nitrification. Datasets include, soil water, throughfall, leaf litter and nitrogen cycling.

The data presented here are ion concentrations in mg/L, averaged by site by month. Concentrations of ammonium, nitrate, and sulfate are expressed as concentrations of the ion, not the element (N or S). Centimeters of throughfall is calculated by dividing the volume of sample collected by the area of the collector. All data are site-wide monthly means.

File list:

pj_ltm_data_throughfall_metadata.pdf -contains complete project metadata, personnel, methodology, and definitions for data variables in data file.

pj_ltm_data_throughfall_1993-1999.csv