Contribution of land cover and wind to the airborne pollen recorded in a South European urban area
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Contribution of land cover and wind to the airborne pollen recorded in a South European urban area Francesco Ciani . Giovanna Marchi . Lorella Dell’Olmo . Bruno Foggi Marta Mariotti Lippi
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Received: 2 October 2019 / Accepted: 21 February 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Airborne pollen assemblage depends on the land cover of the area surrounding the volumetric trap and the flow of air masses. In urban contexts, the amount of airborne pollen is the result of the contribution of both local green areas and extra-urban vegetation, in addition to wind direction and speed. The present study focused on the combined effects of land cover and wind on the airborne pollen recorded in Florence over a 5-year period, in order to identify the area from where most of the pollen comes to the city. The study revealed that Cupressaceae, Olea and Quercus pollen display a positive correlation among their pollen concentrations and the geographical distribution of their sources. The overall influence of maximum wind speed is greater than the number of calm wind days. The latter is appreciable only for the pollen of Cupressaceae and Olea, whose trees are
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-020-09634-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. F. Ciani (&) L. Dell’Olmo B. Foggi M. Mariotti Lippi Department of Biology, University of Florence, Via La Pira 4, 50121 Florence, Italy e-mail: [email protected] G. Marchi Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Tuscany, Laboratorio Area Vasta Sud - UO Biologia, Viale Maginardo 1, 52100 Arezzo, Italy
located in the proximity of the urban area, in the southern part of the city. The results showed that the land cover configuration strongly influences the airborne pollen captured by volumetric traps; despite the prevalent wind directions, the vegetation of the reliefs surrounding the city can be considered as the greatest area of pollen contribution. Keywords Pollen forecasting Land cover Wind data GIS Urban environment Southern Europe
1 Introduction Human activities strongly shape the landscape: this is particularly evident in southern Europe, where only 4.7% of the primary plant communities have been preserved unaltered (Geri et al. 2010). Every change in land cover has a decisive impact on the local pollen emission. In addition to the plants growing in the area, several other factors affect pollen records, including topography, latitude and weather variables (Rojo et al. 2015). The forecast of airborne particles must absolutely take into account the weather variables, since several meteorological factors such as wind, rainfall, air temperature and humidity strongly influence airborne pollen concentration (Damialis et al. 2005). Airflow, in particular, has been recognised as one of the major factors affecting pollen circulation in the atmosphere (Palacios et al. 2000), given that wind direction an
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