Environmental Forming Health Improving Effect of Tree and Shrub Vegetation as a Sanogenic Factor on Air: View on the Problem

Abstract

Introduction. The climate changes, in particular, its oxygen and water vapor content in air have acquired special importance for human health. The aim of the study. To investigate the environmental health effect of tree-shrub vegetation on the air as a sanogenic factor. Materials and methods. The impact of tree and shrub vegetation productivity on the air material and energy balance were performed on the fundamental method basis. The forest productivity in Ukraine and, particularly, of Lviv region and individual objects nature reserve fund, is represented by tree trunks annual increment average volume of official data. The amount of deposited carbon in the total phytomass, produced oxygen and water vapor, as well as the thermal energy consumption for its evaporation was calculated on the material-energy proportions basis of photosynthesis and transpiration processes. Results. The Ukrainian forests annually produce 60 million tons of atomic oxygen, making an important impact for air enrichment and local disinfection. Also they vapor 36.3×109 tons of water, consuming for this purpose 25×106 GW-hours thermal energy, which is cooling the boundary air layer upon the Ukrainian territory up to 0.3-0.6 0С. Subjected to an average annual wood increment of 4.2 m3/ha-1/year-1, their tree and shrub vegetation produce annually 6.72 t/ha-1 of oxygen and vapor 4064 t/ha-1 of water. Such evaporation requires consumption of 2.772 GW/h/ha-1 of thermal energy, which is equal for cooling of the 30-meter surface air layer in their stands by 1.84-3.05 0С. Conclusions. The obtained results emphasize an extremely important environment-forming role of the production process of tree-shrub vegetation, in particular, forests, nature reserve objects, parks and green spaces of cities and towns. Such fundamental provisions should be reflected in the educational process of ecology, resort science and phytoremediation. On their basis, it is expedient to develop projects for optimizing the environment of settlements, industrial and resort zones. An increase in the environment-forming influence of vegetation can be achieved by increasing their productivity, in particular, by increasing the potential indicators of the volume, density and growth of stands per unit area. It is desirable to have a large number of large trees of fast-growing species.