Test of the short-term critical levels for acute ozone injury on plants—improvements by ozone uptake modelling and the use of an effect threshold

The current short-term critical levels for acute ozone injury on plants were evaluated based on 32 datasets from eastern Austria, Belgium and southern Sweden with subterranean clover (Trifolium subterraneum L., cv. Geraldton). Potential improvements using an exposure index related to ozone uptake (AFst, Accumulated Stomatal Flux), a modified accumulated exposure over the threshold (mAOT) exposure index and the introduction of an effect threshold in the short-term critical level were investigated. The existing short-term critical levels did not accurately describe the effects in terms of observed visible injury. Using a mAOT based on solar radiation and vapour pressure deficit (VPD) improved the explanation of observed visible injury. However, using a simple stomatal conductance model, driven by solar radiation, air temperature, VPD and ozone uptake, the correlation between modelled and observed effects were considerably improved. The best performance was obtained when an ozone uptake rate threshold of 10 nmol m−2 s−1 (AFst10, per unit total leaf area) was used. The results suggested the use of an effect threshold of 10% leaf injury in order to minimise the risk of erroneously recorded visible injury due to observation technique or other injuries hard to distinguish from ozone injury. A new, AFst based exposure index was suggested, an ozone exposure of AFst10=75 μmol m−2 during an exposure period of eight days was estimated to prevent more than 10% visible injury of the leaves. This study strongly suggests that a simple model for ozone uptake much better explains observed effects, compared to the currently used exposure index AOT40. However, if a lower degree of complexity, data requirements and also a lower extent of explanation of observed effects are to be considered a new short-term critical level, based on a mAOT may be suggested: a mAOT30 of 160 ppb h during an exposure period of 8 days is estimated to protect the leaves from visible injury on more than 10% of the leaves.