Applications of redundancy analysis for the detection of chemical response patterns to air pollution in lichen

The lichens Ramalina celastri (Spreng.) Krog & Swinsc., Punctelia microsticta (Müll. Arg.) Krog and Canomaculina pilosa (Stizenb.) Elix & Hale were transplanted simultaneously to 17 urban-industrial sites in a northwestern area of Córdoba city, Argentina. The transplantation sites were set according to different environmental conditions: traffic, industries, tree cover, building height, topographic level, position in the block and distances from the river and from the power plant. Three months later, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, phaeophytin a, soluble proteins, hydroperoxy conjugated dienes, malondialdehyde concentration and sulfur accumulation were determined, and a pollution index was calculated for each sampling site. Redundancy analysis was applied to detect the variation pattern of the lichen variables that can be 'best' explained by the environmental variables considered. The present study provides information about both the specific pattern response of each species to atmospheric pollution, and environmental conditions that determine it. As regards pollutants emission sources R. celastri showed a chemical response associated mainly with pollutant released by the power plant and traffic. P. microsticta and C. pilosa responded mainly to industrial sources. Regarding environmental conditions that affect the spreading of air pollutants and their incidence on the bioindicator, the topographic level and tree cover surrounding the sampling site were found to be important for R. celastri, tree cover surrounding the sampling site and the building height affected P. microsticta, while building height did so for C. pilosa.

A study of the impact of environmental surroundings on personal well-being in urban China using a multi-item well-being indicator

We examine the relationship between atmospheric and water pollution, traffic congestion, access to parkland and personal well-being using a survey administered across six Chinese cities in 2007. In contrast to existing studies of well-being determinants by economists which typically employ single-item indicators, we use the Personal Well-being Index (PWI). We also employ the Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) to measure job satisfaction, which is one of the variables for which we control when examining the relationship between environmental surroundings and personal well-being. Previous research by psychologists has shown the PWI and JSS to have good psychometric properties in western and Chinese samples. A robust finding is that in cities with higher levels of atmospheric pollution and traffic congestion, respondents report lower levels of personal well-being ceteris paribus. Specifically, we find that a one standard deviation increase in suspended particles or sulphur dioxide emissions is roughly equivalent to a 12-13% reduction in average monthly income in the six cities. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

High-resolution monitoring of atmospheric pollutants using a system of low-cost sensors

Increased levels of particulate matter (PM) in the atmosphere have contributed to an increase in mortality and morbidity in communities and are the main contributing factor for respiratory health problems in the population. Currently, PM concentrations are sparsely monitored; for instance, a region of over 2200 square kilometers surrounding Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, is monitored using ten sensor stations. This paper proposes to improve the estimation of PM concentration by complementing the existing high-precision but expensive PM devices with low-cost lower precision PM sensor nodes. Our evaluation reveals that local PM estimation accuracies improve with higher densities of low-precision sensor nodes. Our analysis examines the impact of the precision of the lost-cost sensors on the overall estimation accuracy.