Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
centrations of pollutants in the atmosphere above which direct adverse effects on receptors
(such as freshwater or forest ecosystem elements) may occur”. Areas where critical loads
may be exceeded can be identified by comparing geographically gridded critical load maps
with modelled geographically gridded deposition data for present or theoretical emission
scenarios.
In 2012, the CLRTAP Gothenburg Protocol was amended to provide more ambitious
national emission reduction commitments to be achieved by 2020. The revision included
new sets of emission limit values for key stationary and mobile sources of acidifying sub-
stances. Italso introduced emission ceilings forfine particulate matter.This was goodnews
for climate scientists, as we will see when we look at the impact of black carbon (a short-
lived climate forcer) on Arctic climate warming. Regional policies, such as the directives
of the European Union, have also become increasingly important for achieving emission
reductions.
But what does all this mean for the Arctic? At the time when the Rovaniemi Declar-
ation of 1991 established the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and Arctic Mon-
itoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), little monitoring data for the Arctic were
available. It was clear that in some Arctic areas, emissions of acidifying substances and
heavy metals from several smelters in Russia, such as in the Kola Peninsula at Nikel and
Monchegorsk and further to the east at Norilsk, were responsible for local or regional ter-
restrial and freshwater ecosystem damage. I first visited the Kola Peninsula in the Barents
Region at the very end of the Soviet era. Downwind of each smelter was a devastated land-
scape of lifeless forests and lakes that extended in some areas across borders into Norway
and Finland. However, the spatial extent of effects of these within Arctic sources had not
beenquantifiedandnocomprehensiveattempthadbeenmadetoevaluateanyimpactsfrom
sources outside the Arctic. Therefore, in 1991, our question relating to the Arctic could
not be answered and AMAP set about establishing acidification monitoring arrangements
across the affected subregion.
The first AMAP acidification assessment was coordinated by Juha Kämäri and pub-
lishedin1998.Itwasfoundthatsomeecosystemeffectsattributabletolowdepositionacid-
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