Critical acid loads for different soils of the Mediterranean environment

In order to establish strategies to reduce the pollutant emisions, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has proposed several methodologies which allows quantification of the Critical Loads (CL) for acid deposition in Europe. Nevertheless, the Steady State Mass Balance and, particularly, the Profile Model — the most common of these methodologies — has been developed for soils with specific acidity problems in Northern Europe and it should be validated for the Mediterranean continental regions. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the Critical Loads of some characteristic pedological ecosystems of the Madrid Community Territory within a north-south transect which also can represents other Mediterranean areas. With some amendments, we consider the Profile model to be applicable.