Calcium avaiability to forests has been shown to be reduced by acidic deposition in several ways including: increased leaching from foliage, increased leaching from soils, and decreased availability from poorly buffered soils when aluminium is mobilized. Studies documented that acidic deposition has altered the growth and vigour of red spruce during the past three decades by changing calcium availability.

Deposition rates in Baden-Wuerttemberg, which are monitored by sampling grid, mostly exceed critical loads. This applies especially for nitrogen input and the deposition of total acidity. In a periodic inventory of tree nutrition on a basic grid of 4 km, regions abundant and persistent Mg and K deficiency could be identified.

There is a strong evidence to indicate that sulphates and nitrogen oxides cause increased leaching of base cations, principally calcium and magnesium from soils supporting old-growth sugar maple forest in central Canada. Sugar maple trees sequester Ca, especially in bark. A site low in exchangeable bases might become less productive, if subjected to prolonged high rates of leaching and full tree harvesting.

Experimental research on the physiology of tree seedlings under simulated climate and doubled carbon dioxide can rarely be extrapolated to grown forests. Climatological research has demonstrated a warming trend in the north and a cooling trend in the south of China. However, the changing climate has not caused the death of forests. Projecting the impact of climate change on forest distribution and growth using current GCMs seems to be the only method available.

Two modeling approaches were applied to evaluate the potential risks of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and possible climate change on the vegetation cover of the Alpine region. The first model is a stochastic forest succession simulator, the second is a static regression type model. The questions of the study were as follows: (1) Which temporal vegetation changes might occur under given carbon dioxide and climate scenarios? (2) Which region of the Alps might be most susceptible to a vegetation change?

Northern species not only tolerate but even benefit vegetatively from a slightly warmer climate than they have been adapted to. If the climatic warming remains below 5 celsius in annual mean temperature, the present forest will not be subject to direct disaster. Reproductive processes are likely to be enhanced through increased flowering and better seed maturation. There are few empirical studies on reproductive biology in new environments.

Air pollutants such as ozone may affect tree host-pathogen interactions by altering plant tissue susceptibility, plant resistance, pathogen virulence and inoculum density. Ozone has been shown to weaken trees in natural stands and increase their susceptibility to invasion by plant pathogens, such as Heterobasidion annosum. Ozone has also been shown to enhance disease development by fungi that are normally saprophytic in nature.

Forest Scientists must recognize that numerous diseases and insect occurrences as well as more subtle environmental stresses are prevalent as causes of changes in forest health. Their interactions often lead to "natural" declines of individual tree species or site-species declines of multiple species. The role of air pollution should be carefully investigated in an integrative sense with these other endemic and sometimes epidemic outbreaks of biotic agents and environmental stresses.

The potential effects of long-term exposures to widespread low but raised concentrations above natural levels in Central Europe are still being discussed. This uncertainty results from an inadequate mechanistic understanding of the influence of air pollutants and other environmental factors of trees.

The results of numerous investigations in Europe on potential relationships between forest decline caused by immissions and the wood quality of diseased trees consistently showed the technical properties of wood form diseased trees to be unaffected. Wood from diseased trees can be used without reservation.