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Improving assessment tools for political consulting and implementation through local validation of air pollution models (FORESTFLUX)

Project


Project code: TI-AK-08-PID1727, 3715 51 211 0
Contract period: 01.10.2015 - 31.08.2018
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment

Agriculture in Germany generates more than 90 % of national ammonia emissions. Data for determining emissions, transport and deposition are scarce and highly uncertain. Only little knowledge and few measurements exist about accurate quantification of ammonia release, its transport and deposition after fertilizer application. For the generation of more useful data sets, the Thünen Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture deploys novel measurement techniques for the determination of ammonia and total nitrogen ecosystem-atmosphere exchange fluxes. We conduct continuous eddy-covariance measurements at a representative forest site in the ‘Bavarian Forest’ national park. Concentration and flux data are being used to validate local and regional air pollution models with the aim to reduce existing uncertainties and to derive suitable model input parameters. New findings from combining measurements and modeling will be transferred to evaluate other forest ecosystems. The comparison of results to traditional methods of estimating nitrogen input – such as a canopy balance approach – is a further aim of the study. Scientists and technicians from Thünen Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture and the ‘Bavarian Forest’ national park administration conduct continuous concentration measurements of ammonia and total reactive nitrogen at the ‘Forellenbach’ site and determine exchange fluxes between forest ecosystem and atmosphere. The analysis of biophysical control parameters will be used to improve the understanding of ecosystem functioning. Measurement data will serve as model input and for the derivation of ecosystem-specific parameters. Model output will be used to quantify and to understand the exchange of reactive nitrogen compounds on local, regional and national scale and will help assessing environmental quality objectives.

First results show very low ammonia concentrations at the forest site. However, highly variable total nitrogen concentrations may indicate the presence of nitrogen oxides from local industry.

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Subjects

Framework programme

BMEL - research cluster

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