Meteorological factors driving airborne grass pollen concentration in central Iberian Peninsula
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Meteorological factors driving airborne grass pollen concentration in central Iberian Peninsula Jorge Romero-Morte
. Jesu´s Rojo
. Rosa Pe´rez-Badia
Received: 15 December 2019 / Accepted: 13 June 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Grasses are a taxonomic group of considerable environmental importance, playing a major ecological role as well as making a significant contribution to the world’s economy, since they include valuable crop and pasture species. Grass pollen allergens are also among the main causes of respiratory allergies worldwide. The interpretation of airborne grass pollen concentrations is a particularly complex task, given the marked diversity of pollenemitting species and the influence of weather-related variables. This paper examines the influence of meteorological variables on flowering in the species contributing most to airborne grass pollen concentrations. This study was carried out in the surroundings of the city of Toledo (Spain), a Mediterranean city located in the center of the Iberian Peninsula. Temperature was the variable most influencing flowering onset, which was also affected by relative humidity, rainfall and hours of sunlight. The flowering period of grass species that flower at the start of spring (Bromus rubens and Hordeum leporinum) began earlier in years with higher mean winter temperatures, while the
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10453-020-09647-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. Romero-Morte J. Rojo R. Pe´rez-Badia (&) Institute of Environmental Sciences, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain e-mail: [email protected]
species that flower from mid to late spring (Trisetaria panicea and Dactylis glomerata subsp. hispanica), the flowering period began earlier in years with higher cumulative rainfall in winter and spring, which were also the years with the highest mean temperatures. Research into the influence of weather-related variables on grass phenology can shed important light on variations in airborne pollen concentrations, which determine the potential period of exposure for allergy sufferers. Keywords Phenology Grasses Meteorological variables Weather Pollen exposure Poaceae
1 Introduction Grasses form a taxonomic group of species growing in abundance over a wide range of different habitats and dominate the grasslands which cover over one-fifth of the earth’s surface (Simon et al. 2011; Soreng et al. 2015, 2017). This group, which includes both cereal crops and pasture species, is the most economically important of all the plant families (Wiersema and Leo´n 2016). Grasses are significant not only in ecological and socioeconomic terms, but also in terms of public health. Their pollen is a major cause of hay fever in Europe and elsewhere (Garcı´a-Mozo 2017; Larsson et al. 2016; Zeb et al. 2018), due to the
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Aerobiologia
elevated allergenic potential of grass pol
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