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Scarce evidence of ozone effect on recent health and productivity of alpine forests—a case study in Trentino, N. Italy

  • Ozone and plant life: the Italian state-of-the-art
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Abstract

We investigated the significance of tropospheric ozone as a factor explaining recent tree health (in terms of defoliation) and productivity (in terms of basal area increment, BAI) in 15 ICP Forests level I and one level II plots in alpine forests in Trentino (N. Italy). Mean daily ozone summer concentrations varied between 30 and 72 parts per billion (ppb) leading to large exceedance of concentration-based critical levels set to protect forest trees. Phytoxic ozone dose (POD0) estimated at the level II plot over the period 1996–2009 was 31–61 mmol m−2 projected leaf area (PLA). The role of ozone was investigated taking into account other site and environmental factors. Simple linear regression, multiple linear regression (MLR, to study mean periodical defoliation and mean periodical BAI), and linear mixed models (LMM, to study annual defoliation data) were used. Our findings suggest that—regardless of the metric adopted—tropospheric ozone is not a significant factor in explaining recent status and trends of defoliation and BAI in the alpine region examined. Both defoliation and BAI are in turn driven by biotic/abiotic damage, nutritional status, DBH (assumed as a proxy for age), and site characteristics. These results contrast with available ozone-growth dose response relationships (DRRs) and other observational studies. This may be due to a variety of concurrent reasons: (i) DRRs developed for individual saplings under controlled condition are not necessarily valid for population of mature trees into real forest ecosystems; (ii) some observational studies may have suffered from biased design; and (iii) since alpine forests have been exposed to high ozone levels (and other oxidative stress) over decades, possible acclimation mechanisms cannot be excluded.

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Acknowledgements

This is the paper no. 7 of the Ozone EFFORT project. We are grateful to Wolfgang Loibl for his early advice in modeling hourly ozone concentration. We are also grateful to the Italian national forest monitoring program CONECOFOR for the data of the Passo Lavazè site. Marco Carrer (Università di Padova) and Francesco Camin contributed the tree ring data for Passo Lavazè. Two anonymous reviewers provided a number of valuable comments and helped us to improve the quality of the original manuscript.

Funding

The authors acknowledge the financial support by the Autonomous Province of Trento, Forest Service and Fauna, and the local Environmental Protection Agency (APPA Trento).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forests, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL, Züricherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Marco Ferretti

  2. TerraData environmetrics, Spin-Off Company of the University of Siena, Via L. Bardelloni 19, 58025 Monterotondo Marittimo, Grosseto, Italy

    Marco Ferretti, Giorgio Brunialti, Luisa Frati & Simona Maccherini

  3. Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Via L. Giorgieri 10, 34127, Trieste, Italy

    Giovanni Bacaro

  4. Provincia Autonoma di Trento, Servizio Foreste e Fauna, Via G.B. Trener 3, 38121, Trento, Italy

    Mauro Confalonieri

  5. Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach (FEM), Via E. Mach 1, 38010, San Michele all’Adige, Italy

    Fabiana Cristofolini, Antonella Cristofori & Elena Gottardini

  6. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, via Musei 41, 25121, Brescia, Italy

    Angelo Finco & Giacomo Gerosa

  7. Department of Life Science, University of Siena, Via P.A. Mattioli 4, 53100, Siena, Italy

    Simona Maccherini

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  1. Marco Ferretti
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Correspondence to Marco Ferretti.

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Ferretti, M., Bacaro, G., Brunialti, G. et al. Scarce evidence of ozone effect on recent health and productivity of alpine forests—a case study in Trentino, N. Italy. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 8217–8232 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1195-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-1195-z

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