Abstract :
[en] Temperate forests, as other ecosystems and oceans, mitigate the accumulation in the atmosphere of CO2, the main responsible for the current climate change. It is, therefore, a necessity to understand how these forests react and will react in a changing environment. That requires long-term monitoring of the environment. Tropospheric ozone is one parameter to monitor as it affects the forest by inducing oxidative stress once inside the leaves.
Using 16 years of continuous data from an air quality monitoring station managed by the ISSeP (Institut Scientifique de Service Public) located in a mixed forest in east Belgium, we identified ozone concentration extreme events and we investigated their occurrence frequency as well as their relation with climatic variables and air components.
As variables are subjected to daily, yearly and inter-annual dynamics, anomalies were used to detect extreme events. To obtain anomalies, we removed the previously mentioned dynamics from half-hourly raw data.
Daily and yearly dynamics were removed first and explained 40% of the variability observed in half-hourly ozone concentrations. Then, the inter-annual dynamic was obtained by computing the yearly mean of the residuals, it accounted for 2% of the variability observed. A significant (p<0.01) decreasing trend was observed for these residuals. Determining if that trend is site specific or regionally observed can be done by applying the same analysis to the other sites from the network managed by the ISSeP.
No significant trend in the yearly frequency and intensity of extreme events was observed. We used a stepwise regression to identify the variables that explain these extreme events. Significant relations were found between ozone concentration and climatic variables (vapor pressure deficit, temperature, radiation and wind direction) as well as other air components concentration (NO2, NO, NOX, CO).
The next step will be to estimate the forest capacity to uptake ozone in order to predict ozone-induced damage and compared it to the CO2 uptake and H2O emissions measured in an ICOS site, the Vielsalm Terrestrial Observatory, located in the same forest at less than 300 meters from the air quality monitoring station.
