Tree responses to foliar dust deposition and gradient of air pollution around opencast coal mines of Jharia coalfield, I
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Tree responses to foliar dust deposition and gradient of air pollution around opencast coal mines of Jharia coalfield, India: gas exchange, antioxidative potential and tolerance level Siddharth Singh 1 & Bhanu Pandey 1 & Lal Babu Roy 1 & Sameer Shekhar 1 & Ranjeet Kumar Singh 1 Received: 13 May 2020 / Accepted: 1 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Atmospheric pollution by opencast mining activities affects tree species around the mining area. The present study evaluated the responses of five native tree species to air pollution in Jharia coalfield. Sites were selected as closest to farthest from the mining area. Foliar dust deposition and foliar sulphate content affected stomatal conductance, superoxide dismutase activity and ascorbic acid and, thus, increased the susceptibility of sensitive species. Ficus benghalensis and Butea monosperma showed maximum dust deposition, while Adina cordifolia showed minimum deposition. Maximum dust deposition in Ficus benghalensis lowered stomatal conductance and, thus, checked the flux of other acidic gaseous pollutants which led to minimum variation in leaf extract pH. Higher stomatal conductance in Adina cordifolia and Aegle marmelos, on the other hand, facilitated the entry of acidic pollutants and disrupted many biological functions by altering photosynthesis and inducing membrane damage. Low variations in Ficus religiosa, Ficus benghalensis and Butea monosperma with sites and seasons suggest better physiological and morphological adaptations towards pollution load near coal mining areas. Tree species with better adaptation resisted variation in leaf extract pH by effectively metabolising sulphate and, thus, had higher chlorophyll content and relative water content. Keywords Coal mining . Atmospheric pollution . Dust deposition . Leaf extract pH . Stomatal conductance
Introduction Vegetation plays an important role as a sink of air pollution. Leaves of trees and herbs are effective sinks for particulates (Zhang et al. 2019), gases such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) (Anderson and Gough 2020) and organic pollutants (Yin et al. 2020). The gaseous and particulate pollutants after reaching the plant surfaces through various deposition processes enter the leaf interior through stomata or cuticle. The number and size of stomata, leaf size, its orientation and leaf surface structure play major roles in the Responsible Editor: Gangrong Shi Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11088-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Siddharth Singh [email protected]; [email protected] 1
CSIR-Central Institute of Mining & Fuel Research, Dhanbad, Jharkhand 826001, India
uptake of gaseous pollutants (Bharti et al. 2018; Gostin 2009). A proportion of gaseous pollutants (SO2 and NO2) absorbed by leaves also get assimilated through the metabolic pathway (Joshi et al. 2020). There has been serious concern about
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