Pollution trends using bark of morus alba in the cities of buenos aires and mendoza (Argentina)

Abstract

-A comparative study of elements deposited on tree bark was carried out for urban and periurban areas of two of the most important cities in Argentina. The content of Fe, Mg, Al, Mn, Zn, Pb, Ba, Cr, Hg, Cu, Ni, Cd and Sb was determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) in Morus alba tree bark collected in the cities of Buenos Aires and Mendoza. The main air pollutants detected in the Buenos Aires urban area were Ba, Cr, Cu and Ni and indicate significative difference from the Mendoza urban and periurban areas. Significantly, higher concentrations of Zn, Ba, Cr and Cu were recorded in the periurban area of the city of Buenos Aires than in Mendoza. Bark samples were strongly influenced by dust and show Al, Fe, Mg and other element accumulations that indicate that soil particles were carried out by wind. Elements like Ba and Zn, commonly linked to traffic emissions, showed the highest concentrations in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, possibly due to more intensive vehicular traffic. Our results indicated that intensity of vehicular traffic and not city structure is responsible for air pollution. TENDÊNCIAS DE POLUIÇÃO USANDO CASCAS DE MORUS ALBA NAS CIDADES DE BUENOS AIRES E MENDOZA (ARGENTINA) RESUMO -Um estudo comparativo dos elementos depositados nas cascas das árvores foi realizado nas áreas urbanas e na periferia de duas cidades das mais importantes da

The Use of Tree Barks to Monitor Traffic Related Air Pollution: A Case Study in São Paulo–Brazil

“…Despite the recent advances stemming from tree bark studies (Catinon et al, 2009;Perelman et al, 2010;Guéguen et al, 2012;Moreira et al, 2016), identification of tree species with better capacity to record the fine spatial variability of air pollution is still poorly known and constitutes an important research topic. Bark morphology is subject to a high degree of interspecific variability (Yunus et al, 1990;Junikka, 1994) with potential to influence the species ability to record airborne element concentrations (Szczepaniak and Biziuk, 2003).…”

Biomonitoramento intra-urbano da poluição de origem veicular: utilização da casca de árvore na identificação de fontes de poluição atmosférica

“…Além disso, a casca de árvore tem mostrado ser uma alternativa viável tanto para o monitoramento de poluentes orgânicos quanto inorgânicos (Zhao et al, 2006). As cascas são usadas para determinar a contaminação por amônia (Spangenberg et al, 2002) e também elementos químicos, tais como Fe, Mg, Al, Mn, Zn, Pb, Ba, Cr, Cu, Ni e Sb (Guéguen et al 2012;Perelman et al, 2010;Catinon et al, 2009 (Wolterbeek et al, 2010).…”