Estimation of the Impact of Ozone on Four Economically Important Crops in the City Belt of Central Mexico

Abstract

In this work, we report the economic impact of exposure to high ozone concentrations on four important crops in the area of influence of the Mexico City Megalopolis. Estimated yield losses were as follows: maize: 3%; oats: 26%; beans: 14%; sorghum: 15%. The information needed to estimate the impact of air pollution in Mexico is decidedly deficient. Regarding ozone, the coverage provided by the monitoring networks is strongly focused on urban monitoring and its consistency over time is highly irregular. Apart from the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) and less than a handful of other cities, the quality of the data is poor. Ozone in rural areas can be estimated with air quality models. However, these models depend on a high-resolution emissions inventory, which has only been done through validation processes in the MCMA. With these limitations, we set out to estimate the economic impact of exposure to ozone in these crops with a varying degree of sensitivity to ozone in the city belt of Central Mexico. To this end, we developed a procedure that makes optimal use of the sparse information available for construction of AOT40 (accumulated exposure over the threshold of 40 ppb) exceedance maps for the 2011 growing season. We believe that, due to the way in which we dealt with the sparse information and the uncertainty regarding the available data, our findings lie on the safe side of having little knowledge such that they may be useful to decision-makers. We believe that this procedure can be extended to the rest of the country, and that it may be useful to developing countries with similar monitoring and modeling capacities. In addition, these impacts are not evenly distributed in the region and sometimes they were greater in municipalities that have a higher index of poverty. Air pollution arriving from urban areas increases the social inequalities to which these already vulnerable populations are exposed.

Seasonal Changes in Interclone Variation Following Ozone Exposure on Three Major Gene Pools: An Analysis of Cryptomeria Japonica Clones

“…In recent years, there has been an increase in the concentration of ozone in Japan due to a decrease in NO titration and an increase in transboundary air pollution [1][2][3]. With long-term ozone exposure effects on plants, changes in the carbon allocation, photosynthetic rate [4], stomatal conductance [5], yield of crops [6], and biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission characteristics [7] have been reported. The effects of ozone exposure on BVOC emissions have been previously evaluated, and the results of such experiments have not shown a consistent trend with large interspecies variations.…”

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“…Además, este contaminante contribuye al esmog, afectando la calidad del aire., Adicionalmente, puede dañar los tejidos de las plantas, afectando negativamente los cultivos y a los ecosistemas. (Ruiz-Suárez et al, 2018).…”

Increases in Biogenic Volatile Organic Compound Concentrations Observed after Rains at Six Forest Sites in Non-Summer Periods

“…Moreover, BVOCs are important precursors for tropospheric ozone [2][3][4] and secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) [5]. High surface ozone concentration could harm human health and decreases crop yields [6]. In Japan in particular, high ozone concentrations have been observed around forests in recent years, which might be due to the BVOC emissions from forests.…”