Mosses Are Better than Leaves of Vascular Plants in Monitoring Atmospheric Heavy Metal Pollution in Urban Areas

Yanbin Jiang, Miao Fan, Ronggui Hu, Jinsong Zhao and Yupeng Wu
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Yanbin Jiang: Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River), Ministry of Agriculture, College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Miao Fan: Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River), Ministry of Agriculture, College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Ronggui Hu: Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River), Ministry of Agriculture, College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Jinsong Zhao: Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River), Ministry of Agriculture, College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Yupeng Wu: Key Laboratory of Arable Land Conservation (Middle and Lower Reaches of Yangtze River), Ministry of Agriculture, College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: Mosses and leaves of vascular plants have been used as bioindicators of environmental contamination by heavy metals originating from various sources. This study aims to compare the metal accumulation capabilities of mosses and vascular species in urban areas and quantify the suitability of different taxa for monitoring airborne heavy metals. One pleurocarpous feather moss species, Haplocladium angustifolium , and two evergreen tree species, Cinnamomum bodinieri Osmanthus fragrans , and substrate soil were sampled in the urban area of different land use types in Wuhan City in China. The concentrations of Ag, As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Mo, Ni, V, Pb, and Zn in these samples were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The differences of heavy metals concentration in the three species showed that the moss species was considerably more capable of accumulating heavy metals than tree leaves (3 times to 51 times). The accumulated concentration of heavy metals in the moss species depended on the metal species and land use type. The enrichment factors of metals for plants and the correlations of metals in plants with corresponding metals in soil reflected that the accumulated metals in plants stemmed mostly from atmospheric deposition, rather than the substrate soil. Anthropogenic factors, such as traffic emissions from automobile transportation and manufacturing industries, were primarily responsible for the variations in metal pollutants in the atmosphere and subsequently influenced the metal accumulation in the mosses. This study elucidated that the moss species H. angustifolium is relatively more suitable than tree leaves of C. bodinieri and O. fragrans in monitoring heavy metal pollution in urban areas, and currently Wuhan is at a lower contamination level of atmospheric heavy metals than some other cities in China.

Keywords: atmospheric deposition; moss; tree leaves; anthropogenic factor; contamination factor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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