Nitrogen deposition potentially contributes to oak regeneration failure in the Midwestern temperate forests of the USA.

We conducted a 7-year field study at two oak-dominated forest sites which differ in their atmospheric N deposition to test the hypothesis that red oak regeneration failure in the upper Midwestern US forests, at least in part, results from increased N load. The sites are located in Swallow Cliffs (SC) in Cook County, Illinois, and Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore (IDNL) in Porter County, Indiana. Annual wet NO3(-) deposition for the 22 years immediately prior to the experiments was significantly higher in IDNL than in the SC site.