environmental scince hw..?? acid deposition?

Question

Mount Mitchell in North Carolina is the highest point east of the Mississippi in North America. Suppose you adn a friend go to Mt. Mitchell to hike one weekend. You both notice taht the trees on the west side of the mountain have no leaves. Given that acid deposition affects Mt.MItchell, list 3 types of wet acid deposition that may be involved and describe how wet acid deposition affects tree leaves adn roots?

Answer 1

Acid Rain would explain the damaged leaves, Soak up acidic water from rivers, soake water from puddles, which would explain the damaged roots.

The pH scale goes from 0 to 14, with a pH of 7 generally considered neutral like H2O is neutral, however as the pH declines to 6,5,4 etc, H2O gets very acidic which damages trees and erodes thing much faster.

Answer 2

Just in general terms. Rain is naturally weakly acid (pH of 5.5 about relative to neutral pH of 7) due to the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere (CO2 is a weak acid).

Acid rain is rain that has a lower pH because of the presence of other acid compounds, primarily SO2 and NO2. These compounds are released from burning of fossil fuels, metal smelting, and other industrial activities. pHs of 4 to 4.5 are not uncommon. Doesn`t seem like much difference but each unit of pH represents a change in acid content of 10 times.

Plant uptake of nutrients is affected by increasing acidity, plus some of the cells die because they can't live in more acid water. In north america the prevailing wind is from west to east, so acid rain is transferred from the source areas eastward. The rising land causes rain to fall preferentially on the west side, so the west side of mountains are more affected by acid rain. Note that there are smelters and coal-burning power plants west of Mt Mitchell.

Another important factor is that mountain slopes have poorly developed soils that do not possess a very good capacity to buffer (react and neutralize) acid rain. The type of rock in the area is also important, rocks such as limestone are good buffers but rocks like granite and shale and sandstone and their metamorphic equivalents are generally poor buffers. Typically, rain reacts with soil and rock and becomes relatively neutral relatively fast. The pH of rivers and lakes are generally near 7 for this reason.Mountain slopes do not have large water bodies that have time to become neutral so acid rain afects plants more readily, especially because of the poor soils developped from rocks not good at neutralizing the acid rains. Sorry that answer was too long.

Crispy and crinkled leaf edges and a lot of brown leaves is sometimes a sign of acid rain (the plant is sick).