Contact
Associate Professor Johan Stendahl
Department of Soil and Environment
johan.stendahl@slu.se, 018-673801
Assessments of impacts of environmental changes and pollution
Last changed: 20 June 2024
We are investigating the trends and drivers of soil acidity in Swedish forest soils and assess if the Swedish environmental objective ’only natural acidification’ be reached. In addition, our research is focused on where and how contaminants accumulate in terrestrial ecosystems and how soil organic matter formation and decomposition as well as accompanying microorganism communities respond to changes in climate and nitrogen availability.
Soil acidification
Are you curious about the latest knowledge of spatial and temporal trends in soil acidification in Swedish forest soils? We make assessments of what is more acidifying; whole-tree harvesting or atmospheric deposition. The Swedish Forest Soil Inventory is a precious resource for our biogeochemical environmental assessment.
Climate change and changes in other drivers
A warmer climate changes the preconditions for many biogeochemical processes. Other drivers may change simultaneously, for instance nitrogen deposition may level-off, and/or land use and management may change. We make environmental assessments of overall effect of changes in multiple drivers of biogeochemical processes such as mineral weathering, soil organic matter formation and decomposition and nitrogen leaching. Hereby we use information from field experiments, soil inventory and process-oriented modelling.
Risk assessments of contaminants
Sometimes, something happens that should not happen and a forest ecosystem becomes contaminated with a toxic or radioactive element. We make assessments of where, how and why the contaminant may accumulate in the ecosystem using a process-oriented model.