Magnetic properties of high-road-side pine tree leaves in Beijing and their environmental significance

Abstract

This is a report on magnetic properties of highroad-side tree (Pinus pumila Regel) leaves collected along an expressway linking Beijing City and the Capital International Airport and further focus on their environmental contributions. A series of rock magnetic experiments show that the primary magnetic mineral of leaf samples was identified to be magnetite, in the pseudo-single domain (PSD) grain size range 0.2-5.0 μm. On the other hand, magnetite concentration and grain size in leaves are ascertained to decrease with increasing of sampling distance to highroad asphalt surface, suggesting that high magnetic response to traffic pollution is localized within a distance of some two meters away from highroad asphalt surface. Although magnetic susceptibility is ordinarily regarded as a simple, rapid and low-cost method for monitoring traffic pollution, saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) can be treated as a valid proxy for monitoring air particulate matter (PM) when samples are magnetically weak. It is believed that a synthetic rock magnetic study is an effective method for determining concentration and grain size of ferromagnets in the atmospheric PM, and then it should be a rapid and feasible technique for monitoring atmospheric pollution.

Vehicle-derived emissions and pollution on the road autovia 2 investigated by rock-magnetic parameters: A case study from Argentina

“…Magnetic mapping in magnetism has been well accepted for investigating industrial and urban pollution in different environments, such as soils, rivers/streams and lakes, different vegetative habitats, and roads (e.g., Hunt et al, 1984;Hoffmann et al, 1999;Matzka and Maher, 1999;Petrovský and Ellwood, 1999;Jordanova et al, 2003;Amereih et al, 2005;Lu et al, 2005;Zhang et al, 2006;Kim et al, 2007;Chaparro et al, 2007;Maher et al, 2008). A considerable number of studies have indicated relationships between magnetic parameters and heavy metal concentrations based on a genetic relationship from simultaneous production of both particle sources (e.g., Beckwith et al, 1986;Georgeaud et al, 1997;Petrovský et al, 1998;Knab et al, 2001;Spiteri et al, 2005;Chaparro et al, 2006Chaparro et al, , 2008.…”

Magnetic records of heavy metal pollution in urban topsoil in Lanzhou, China

“…Environmental magnetism has become one of the main focuses of current research in pollution history reconstruction, monitoring the present environmental pollution, and tracing and separating the sources of pollution. The atmosphere [18][19][20][21], street dustfall [22][23][24][25], soil [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], sediment [12][13][14], leaves [26][27][28][29] and tree rings [30] are usually used as the research targets. Analysis is developed from a single Wang B, et al Chin Sci Bull January (2013) Vol.58 No.3 385 pollution source to multiple pollution sources and multivariate data analysis, and in some studies semi-quantitative models are created.…”

Power law and small world properties in a comparison of traffic city networks

“…Zhu et al [31] investigated the scaling of directed dynamical small-world networks with random responses. Some other noteworthy results can be seen in [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40].…”