Acid Rain

The following quote is from a site called Regenerating Appalacian Forests and it talks about acid rains effects on trace minerals, something we should take into account as the water many will use will come from the rain - if it is more acid with more heavy metals after the pole shift then we may need to take this advice.

In the 1970s, on remote mountain peaks of the southern Appalachians, many trees began to wither and die. Through the 1980s, this death of trees spread rapidly to become a sylvan holocaust as mountaintops became bald with skeletons of dead and dying trees. By 1988 the "ring of death" on 6684 foot Mt. Mitchell (highest eastern peak) had descended to 5100 feet ...

My colleagues who are soil chemists and physicists have looked looked at these soils in our permanent plots, particularly in high elevation forests, and found -- almost without exception - they are very poorly buffered. This means they can't absorb acids very well, and are very susceptible to leaching of trace elements, particularly magnesium and calcium, which react with acids in the soil. And because of high organic matter contents, they're very susceptible to holding heavy metals, such as aluminum, lead, zinc, copper, cadmium, in soil matrices.

Our analyses found nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium weren't lacking in these soils. In fact, in many cases they were abundant. On the other hand, when we looked at many trace elements, particularly those susceptible to being bound or leached by acids, we found - as in Europe - quite a depletion. We learned our cue from Europeans regarding application of trace minerals. They're applying dolomite/limestone on their forests. From experimental fields I've seen in the Black Forest and other areas, they've had remarkable recoveries from air pollution effects by application of mineral slurries and/or dusts.

Offered by Mike.