Protection of the environment has been of public concern for many years in Italy and many institutions here are involved in this field. However, the advantages offered by the improvement of the quality of the environment are not always considered in economic terms, even though a rigorous evaluation of the relationships between economy and environment should help us to better understand how protection of the environment is related to economic development and social benefits.

Significant correlations (p0.05) were found between the concentration of elements in the c needles and the distance of the sites from nitrogen ferilizer factory (NFF): the amounts of C, K, Mg, Zn, and Rb in the c+1 needles were increasing, whereas concentrations of N, P, Al, Mn, Cu, Ni, Sr and Cd were decreasing alongside the transect from NFF. Statistical analyses performed on logarithms and estimation of components of variance by maximum likelihood has shown that the age of the needles and the sites were the most important, while year of sampling was much smaller source of variance. Only a few significant differences were found comparing the amount of elements in Scots pine needles collected in four-year space

Five permanent plots in pine and spruce stands were established at beginning of the 90s. The sites were situated in a gradient of air pollution level, from the south to the north of Poland. There are presented changes in SO2 and NO2 concentration in the air as well as loads of acidic compounds and the exceedance of critical loads in the period of 1993-2001. Response of the forest ecosystems was evaluated by changes in health status of trees and changes in biodiversity at forest permanent plots. The comparative study revealed an improvement in the health condition of trees and a tendency of ecosystems to regenerate due to greater than 30% decrease in emission in the last decade

Soil microorganisms are important for plant growth and beneficial for the nutrition and the development of a variety of soil animals. Together with soil invertebrates they also improve nutrients availability in soils. Although not frequent in Europe , magnesite emissions can affect the nutritional status of the vegetation and the survival of soil microorganisms as well as other biota locally, and thus may be crucially responsible for the quality of the entire biotic system. The observed gradients of soil microbial characteristics reflect the physico-chemical properties of soils around the magnesite plant and may be used to predict transitory changes during amelioration

Elevated CO2 was shown to influence the nutritional status of exposed ecosystems. In an earlier experiment in model ecosystems in open-top chambers with young spruce and beech, the nitrate concentration of the soil solution was dramatically reduced after 4 years exposure to elevated CO2. This phenomenon was mainly interpreted as an immobilization of nitrogen in the soil. To test if such effects occur also in mature, undisturbed natural forests, we used facilities of the Swiss Canopy Crane project. Here in a mixed 120 years old forest the crowns of 30-35 m high broadleaved trees are fumigated with CO2 during the growing season since spring 2001. According to the results the soil is probably not yet much influenced by the fumigation of the tree crowns, and it is too early to estimate whether the observed nutrient effects are due to the CO2 treatment or to the natural variability of the soil

The biological effects of both elevated CO2 and N deposition on model ecosystem were investigated in the Birmensdorf open-top chamber facility. Each of the 16 chambers was divided into two compartments with a ground area of 3 msub2 and filled with natural unfertilized forest soils from two sites (one acidic, the other calcareous). Elevated CO2 significantly increased O and Zn concentrations in beech leaves and those of Zn in spruce needles on the calcareous soils. Enhanced N deposition also led to a dilution of nutrients and increased N contents

Investigation of air pollution impact on tree condition indicates the greatest correlation between pine defoliation and SO2, SO4 and NH4 concentration in the air, NH4 load with precipitation and its pH in the eastern part of Lithuania. In the southern part significant correlation was found between defoliation and SO4 concentration in the air and SO4, NH4 load with precipitation and its pH. No significant correlation was found in the western region of the country, which includes seaside part. Tree age and tree development classes have an essential effect on the correlation significance