| Abstract: | Risk assessment of heavy metal input into forest ecosystems requires information about metal fluxes from the forest floor (organic layer) into the mineral soil. Common methods for the monitoring of element fluxes are generally time‐consuming and expensive. Additionally, the reliability of the results is in part contested especially for trace elements, showing very low concentrations which are sometimes even below analytical detection limit. We used ion exchange resin tubes installed below the forest floor to determine heavy metal and As fluxes at 25 forest monitoring sites in Germany. Chloride tracer experiments and the comparison of our data with throughfall and lysimeter data, determined within the Level II monitoring network, proved the accuracy of our method. Mean trace element fluxes based on the resin method were 50 g As ha–1 yr–1, 2 g Cd ha–1 yr–1, 168 g Cu ha–1 yr–1, 176 g Ni ha–1 yr–1, and 186 g Pb ha–1 yr–1.The results show that the organic layer may change into a source of heavy metals after emission has decreased. |
