Plant canopies: bio-monitor and trap for re-suspended dust particulates contaminated with heavy metals

S. Ram (), S. Majumder, P. Chaudhuri, S. Chanda, S. Santra, P. Maiti, M. Sudarshan and A. Chakraborty

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 2014, vol. 19, issue 5, 499-508

Abstract: Urban and peri-urban vegetation is being considered for air pollution abatement. Appropriate plants with efficiency to adsorb and absorb air-pollutants are the prerequisite for green space development. The contributions of surface morphology towards plant’s ability to function as dust particulate adsorber and distribution of trace elements over the leaves are investigated in the present study. Dust interception efficiency was estimated for two roadside plant species named Ficus benghalensis, and Polyalthia longifolia. Leaves of both the plants are capable of capturing dust in the range of 0.12 mg/cm 2 to 1.89 mg/cm 2 on either of the leaf surfaces. However, variation in dust capturing capacity between the plants was observed. Leaf surface characters such as roughness, length, frequency of trichomes and frequency of stomata played a significant role in capturing re-suspended dust. Frequency (2 to 4 per 0.0004 cm 2 ) and length (152.5 to 92.1 cm) of trichome showed negative co-relation trend, where as frequency and size of stomata showed positive co-relation trend. Elemental analysis by Scanning Electron Microscope attached with Energy Dispersive X-Ray Spectrometer (SEMEDS) indicated the presence of elements such as Sodium (Na), Magnesium (Mg), Aluminium (Al), Silicon (Si), Chlorine (Cl), Pottasium (K), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn) and Arsenic (As). The results support the fact that plant canopies can be used for mitigation and bio-monitoring of air pollution as well. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Air pollution; Re-suspended dust; Dust adsorption; SEMEDS; Foliar structures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11027-012-9445-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:masfgc:v:19:y:2014:i:5:p:499-508

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11027

DOI: 10.1007/s11027-012-9445-8

Access Statistics for this article

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change is currently edited by Robert Dixon

More articles in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().