Bioindication of Sulphur Dioxide Pollution with Lichens
Bioindicators are organisms that react to environmental pollution with their life functions (Arndt et al. 1987 ). According to (1970 ) and (1973 ) lichens can be used as bioindicators in the following methods: • Passive bioindication uses naturally occurr
- PDF / 2,207,508 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 547.09 x 685.98 pts Page_size
- 111 Downloads / 202 Views
Bioindication of Sulphur Dioxide Pollution with Lichens FRANC BATIe
Introduction Bioindicators are organisms that react to environmental pollution with their life functions (Arndt et al. 1987). According to Hawksworth and Rose (1970) and Ferry et al. (1973) lichens can be used as bioindicators in the following methods: •
Passive bioindication uses naturally occurring lichens for monitoring purposes.
•
Active bioindication involves collecting lichens in areas with clean air, moving them to polluted areas then testing for the effects of air pollution.
•
Reactive bioindicators respond to air pollution and other stress with their life functions (e.g. growth, structure, distribution).
•
Accumulative bioindicators are organisms that accumulate pollutants without significant damage to their life functions, at least up to a certain dose of pollutant.
The advantage of using bioindicators rather than instrumental monitoring is that the latter can never measure all the abiotic and biotic factors that can affect life. Bioindication can clearly show the effects that particular pollutants and their mixtures are having on biota. Although instrumental monitoring can determine the levels of pollutants in the air, water and soil, the data obtained cannot always indicate when humankind, fauna and flora are at risk. For this, it is necessary to measure the effects on living organisms. The use of plants as bioindicators of environmental conditions
Franc Batie, University of Lubljana, Department of Agronomy, Biotechnical Faculty, Jamnikarjeva 101, Ljubljana, 1000, Slovenia (phone +386-1-423-1161; fax +386-1-4231088; e-mail [email protected])
I. C. Kranner et al. (eds .), Protocols in Lichenology © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
PROTOCOL
484
FRANC BATIe
is accepted in phytocenology, a study of plant communities (Ellenberg et al. 1992), and also in monitoring water quality. In efforts to monitor air quality, epiphytic lichens were one of the first recognised plant indicators (Ferry et al. 1973), especially in cases where sulphur dioxide was the main air pollutant. The main advantage of techniques based on bioindication is their relatively low cost, allowing sampling strategies with a relatively high density of sampling points. In remote regions it is often the only technique possible. The main disadvantages in using bioindication are the problems of response standardisation, response reproducibility and quantification, and also determination of their relevance at an ecosystem level. Toxicity of sulphur compounds
The physiological basis of the great sensitivity oflichens to sulphur compounds lies in the acidic characteristic of sulphur dioxide as the main anthropogenic source of sulphur. It is known that sulphur dioxide, sulphite and sulphate are the most harmful forms for lichens (e.g. Hawksworth and Rose 1970, Nash 1973, Turk and Wirth 1974, Deruelle 1978). Harmful effects of sulphur compounds are connected with proton generation, partly also with oxidation of sulphite to sulphate and free radical formatio
Data Loading...
