The occurrence of Ambrosia pollen in Rzeszów, Kraków and Poznań, Poland: investigation of trends and possible transport of Ambrosia pollen from Ukraine

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that ragweed pollen arrives in Poland from sources in the south, in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Austria. It is likely that ragweed pollen also arrives from sources in the southeast (e.g. Ukraine). This hypothesis was investigated using 13 years of pollen data and back-trajectory analysis. Ambrosia pollen data were collected at three sites in Poland, Rzeszów, Kraków and Poznań. The amount of ragweed pollen recorded at Rzeszów was significantly higher than in Poznań and Kraków. This can be related to either a higher abundance of local populations of Ambrosia in south-east Poland or the proximity of Rzeszów to foreign sources of ragweed pollen. The combined results of pollen measurements and air mass trajectory calculations identified plumes of Ambrosia pollen that were recorded at Rzeszów, Kraków and Poznań on 4 and 5 September 1999 and 3 September 2002. These plumes arrived at the pollen-monitoring sites from an easterly direction, indicating sources of Ambrosia pollen in eastern Poland or Ukraine. This identifies Ukraine as a possible new source of ragweed pollen for Poland and therefore an important source area of Ambrosia pollen on the European Continent.

Risk of exposure to airborne <i>Ambrosia</i> pollen from local and distant sources in Europe – an example from Denmark

“…The overall synoptic weather situation was investigated using analysed weather maps from the UK Meteorological Office, as well as reanalysed meteorological data and meteorological observations obtained from the National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) using the methodology given in Stach et al [14] and Kasprzyk et al [6]. Back-trajectory calculations were conducted using the HYSPLIT model [24] following the methodology described by Stach et al [14] that is used as an indicator of potential source areas according to and subsequently used by Smith et al [13], Šikoparija et al [16] and Kasprzyk et al [6].…”

“…The Pannonian Plain is one of the most heavily infected areas with A. artemisiifolia L., and is therefore one of the largest sources of Ambrosia pollen in Europe [2,3]. Other large source areas of Ambrosia pollen include parts of northern Italy [4], France [5] and Ukraine [6,7]. It has been recognized that Ambrosia has spread across Europe from these major source areas during the last 10-20 years [8,9].…”

“…It has been recognized that Ambrosia has spread across Europe from these major source areas during the last 10-20 years [8,9]. Each Ambrosia plant produces millions of pollen grains that are small (18-22 μm) [10,11,12] and can be transported long-distances to areas where the source plant is scarce or not even registered, such as parts of Poland [6,13,14], Italy [4,15], the Balkans [16], and as far as Scandinavia [17]. The high allergenic capacity of the ragweed pollen grains [18] means that small amounts of Ambrosia pollen can be important for allergy sufferers, although the clinical relevance of the long distance transport (LDT) of allergenic ragweed pollen remains unclear [19].…”

Aerobiology in the International Journal of Biometeorology, 1957–2017

“…There is now a large body of evidence showing that atmospheric transport can result in high atmospheric pollen concentrations and modify pollen season characteristics such as start date and duration (Sofiev et al 2006(Sofiev et al , 2013a, including a number of papers published in IJB on the subject (Damialis et al 2005;Stach et al 2007;Belmonte et al 2008;Šikoparija et al 2009;Skjøth et al 2009;Hernández-Ceballos et al 2011;Izquierdo et al 2011;Kasprzyk et al 2011;Fernández-Rodríguez et al 2014;Grewling et al 2016). It is argued that such atmospheric transport episodes cannot be predicted by the use of local or regional observations, and forecasts need to be constructed at the continental level and include the biological and meteorological mechanisms that control the release and subsequent dispersion of pollen to the atmosphere (Sofiev et al 2006).…”

“…Sofiev et al (2006) reported that the most challenging part of numerical pollen forecasting was to determine the emission source. Several studies focusing on atmospheric pollen transport published in IJB have been conducted with the aim of identifying the locations of pollen sources (Stach et al 2007;Šikoparija et al 2009;Skjøth et al 2009;Kasprzyk et al 2011;Fernández-Rodríguez et al 2014). Mapping sources of airborne pollen has been an important area of research and notable contributions include Skjøth et al (2008) and Pauling et al (2012).…”