Health, silicic acid effect

For a variety of practical reasons, great effort has been expended in recent years to understand controls on and to predict rates of chemical weathering in soils. A principle reason has been a need to assess the effects of acid precipitation on the chemistry of soils and thus on the health of affected plants and trees. Soil acidification from acid precipitation has been a serious problem in industrialized areas where soils are thin or absent and bedrock and resultant soils lack carbonate or reactive silicate minerals (cf. Likens et al. 1977 Berner and Berner 1996). Soil acidification in such areas has caused the acidification of adjacent streams and even underlying groundwaters (cf. Bottcher et al. 1985 Hansen and Postma 1995). 

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