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Verwertbare Ergebnisse
The study area covered an area of approximately 25 x 30 km around the city of Revda with a population of approximately 700 000. The main source of industrial air pollution in the whole area is SUMZ, a large copper-smelting plant founded more than 50 years ago. During this project 238 sample sites were selected for the ecological survey with lichens. 198 sites were located in the Revda-Pervouralsk industrial region and additional 40 sites in unpolluted, adjacent areas. For the morphophysiological assessment of artificial pine stands, 140 plots with 20-40 year old trees were selected in the same area. Further, provenance tests with pine trees were carried out in a polluted and in an unpolluted area.
48 species of epiphytic lichens were determined on birch trunks in Revda-Pervouralsk industrial area. Lichen communities composed by 18-22 species were common for the weakly polluted zone. Sensitive lichen species were also common in this region. A decrease in diversity of lichen species and their frequencies (IAP) up to their total disappearance was the general tendency of transformation of the epiphytic lichen communities under the emission of SUMZ. This was a result of an unequal sensitivity of lichen species. Further, the frequency of the majority of species was also decreasing as one moved closer to the plant. A extended "lichen desert" is formed in the area 0 - 2.5 km from the emission source.
The pollution by polimetallic dust combined with sulphur dioxide caused an increase of soil acidity and metal concentrations in the upper soil layer. Found were essential exceedances of metal concentrations near SUMZ as compared to background conditions: Cu - up to 90-115-fold, Pb up to 15-21-fold, Zn - up to 10-19-fold, Cd - up to 10-16-fold. The soil contamination index K which is displayed by how many times the various pollutants measured exceeded the background level, reached values as high as 128 at these sites.
Morphological parameters of artificial pine tree plantations included the number of trees per hectare, tree height and diameter, as well as height and diameter increment of the last 5 and 10 years. Physiological parameters included e.g. chlorophyll a and -b as well as carotenoid content and chlorophyll fluorescence characteristics. Further parameters collected on a subset of the plots included stem impedance and proline content of pine needles. Generalized state indices (GSI) were obtained after a Harrington transformation of the morphological (GSI morph) and physiological (GSI phys) data set respectively.
A stepwise regression analysis revealed that up to 13 km from SUMZ 37% of the variance of GSI total can be explained by our data. The values for GSI phys and GSI morph reach lower levels, but are still statistically significant. For the GSI phys, GSI morph and GSI total a higher percentage of the variance can be explained at a low distance from SUMZ. However, higher R2 are generally found for IAP values. The copper-contamination is substantially explained by the number of lichen species and their heavy metal content (<13 km) and the IAP values (>13 km) respectively. This indicates that the parameters evaluated in the project such as heavy metal contamination have a major influence on tree vitality especially under highly polluted conditions. A Spatial interpolation of the pollution data on a 3D landscape model allowed for the visualization of the polluted areas. These maps show that even at distances as far as 30 km from SUMZ the effect of air pollution was still evident.
Cross correlations between the maps revealed high values between the lichen floristic data including the different IAP models and soil contamination. GSI morphology and GSI total respectively and IAP reached equally high values, unlike the other GSI models.
In conclusion both components of the complex ecosystem boreal forest are impaired at pollution levels lower or equal to the official Russian human health standard values (HHS) recommended for air pollution levels. Further to the inherent interest of a forest monitoring per se, lichen bioindication and the morphophysiological tree stand characterisation as elaborated in this project turned out promising and cost efficient approaches to monitor the environmental pollution in extended industrial areas.
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