Effects of Air Pollution on Ecosystems and Biological Diversity in the Eastern United States

• Published in: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Main Authors: Lovett, Gary M., Tear, Timothy H., Evers, David C., Findlay, Stuart E.G., Cosby, B. Jack, Dunscomb, Judy K., Driscoll, Charles T., Weathers, Kathleen C.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2009
• Subjects: Tundra
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04153.x; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fj.1749-6632.2009.04153.x; https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04153.x

Conservation organizations have most often focused on land‐use change, climate change, and invasive species as prime threats to biodiversity conservation. Although air pollution is an acknowledged widespread problem, it is rarely considered in conservation planning or management. In this synthesis, the state of scientific knowledge on the effects of air pollution on plants and animals in the Northeastern and Mid‐Atlantic regions of the United States is summarized. Four air pollutants (sulfur, nitrogen, ozone, and mercury) and eight ecosystem types ranging from estuaries to alpine tundra are considered. Effects of air pollution were identified, with varying levels of certainty, in all the ecosystem types examined. None of these ecosystem types is free of the impacts of air pollution, and most are affected by multiple pollutants. In aquatic ecosystems, effects of acidity, nitrogen, and mercury on organisms and biogeochemical processes are well documented. Air pollution causes or contributes to acidification of lakes, eutrophication of estuaries and coastal waters, and mercury bioaccumulation in aquatic food webs. In terrestrial ecosystems, the effects of air pollution on biogeochemical cycling are also very well documented, but the effects on most organisms and the interaction of air pollution with other stressors are less well understood. Nevertheless, there is strong evidence for effects of nitrogen deposition on plants in grasslands, alpine areas, and bogs, and for nitrogen effects on forest mycorrhizae. Soil acidification is widespread in forest ecosystems across the eastern United States and is likely to affect the composition and function of forests in acid‐sensitive areas over the long term. Ozone is known to cause reductions in photosynthesis in many terrestrial plant species. For the most part, the effects of these pollutants are chronic, not acute, at the exposure levels common in the eastern United States. Mortality is often observed only at experimentally elevated exposure levels or in combination with ...