UNDERSTANDING ONE HUNDRED TWENTY YEARS OF CHANGES IN WATER QUALITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE – A TRIBUTE TO OWEN BRICKER

Owen Bricker was an important co-author and served as a valuable reviewer of papers describing results of small catchment monitoring in Czechoslovakia that were published in the early 1990’s. Several volumes from the meetings of BIOGEOMON described the effect of sulfur and nitrogen emissions and deposition on biogeochemical cycles in forested ecosystems in the “Black triangle” - the most polluted region in central Europe in the late 1980’s. Owen helped many researchers from Eastern Europe with the presentation of their data and ideas.

The small catchments located within the upper Elbe River watershed draining central Europe to the North Sea are still being monitored. Chemical composition of water drained by the Elbe River was previously determined in 1892 by J. Hanamann. His reliable chemical analyses set a unique baseline to which long-term changes in water quality can be compared. The results of long-term monitoring of Elbe River water show that the trends in water quality were influenced mainly by political changes in this part of Europe at the end of the 1980’s and into the early 1990’s. The change from a centrally planned economy of the Communist era to a free-market economy and incorporation of Czech Republic to European Union clearly led to a significant improvement in water quality. The concentrations of sulfate, chloride, and nitrate peaked in 1983 (176, 47, 70 mg/L, respectively) when pH was about 7. Since then, concentrations of the anions have decreased (45, 16, 13 mg/L, respectively) while pH has slowly increased to 7.8, indicating partial recovery. Comparing the present concentrations with the concentrations in 1892 (17, 8, 2 mg/L, respectively) it is clear that water in Elbe is still affected by industrial and agricultural activities.

Systematic monitoring of the chemical composition of the Elbe River since 1967, and monitoring of the small catchments since 1975, specifically indicates changes in trends caused by management of industrial and agricultural pollution. The long-term trends in the Elbe River are related to the changes in biogeochemical cycles in the monitored representative small catchments, all of which were affected by political changes in central Europe.