Minimal response in watershed nitrate export to severe soil frost raises questions about nutrient dynamics in the Hubbard Brook experimental forest

Experimental and theoretical work emphasize the role of plant nutrient uptake in regulating ecosystem nutrient losses and predict that forest succession, ecosystem disturbance, and continued inputs of atmospheric nitrogen (N) will increase watershed N export. In ecosystems where snowpack insulates soils, soil-frost disturbances resulting from low or absent snowpack are thought to increase watershed N export and may become more common under climate-change scenarios. This study monitored watershed N export from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) in response to a widespread, severe soil-frost event in the winter of 2006. We predicted that nitrate (NO₃ ⁻) export following the disturbance would be high compared to low background streamwater NO₃ ⁻ export in recent years. However, post-disturbance annual NO₃ ⁻ export was the lowest on record from both reference (undisturbed) and treated experimental harvest or CaSiO₃ addition watersheds. These results are consistent with other studies finding greater than expected forest NO₃ ⁻ retention throughout the northeastern US and suggest that changes over the last five decades have reduced impacts of frost events on watershed NO₃ ⁻ export. While it is difficult to parse out causes from a complicated array of potential factors, based on long-term records and watershed-scale experiments conducted at the HBEF, we propose that reduced N losses in response to frost are due to a combination of factors including the long-term legacies of land use, process-level alterations in N pathways, climate-driven hydrologic changes, and depletion of base cations and/or reduced soil pH due to cumulative effects of acid deposition.