Effect of air pollution from quarry activities on agriculture and plant biodiversity in South-Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Abstract There are several quarry activities spread across Southeastern Nigeria contributing 8.7% GDP annually to the economy. However, these industries are usually associated with air pollution. To assess the impact of quarry dust on plant biodiversity, PM2.5, PM10 and some meteorological parameters were measured using Aeroqual 500 series as well as taking a social survey. High amount of particulate matters that exceeded the international standard were recorded at the four chosen quarry locations in Ebonyi State. The correlation coefficient between the particulate matters with the meteorological parameters of the locations all show a strong relationship with temperature recording a stronger value of 0.981. Similarly, the coefficient of determination 0.962 shows that temperature has the highest meteorological percentage variation on PM2.5 and PM10. Furthermore, a notable negative impact of quarrying on plant biodiversity, habitat destruction and plant survival are also revealed based on respondents’ results where wide range of local plants were affected with vegetables been the most with respondent of 30%. From the obtained results, it is highly recommended that there should be an establishment of dust control mechanism- by developing green belt around the quarrying using pollutant-tolerant trees in order to restrict spreading of dust and regulating the industry as a self-regulatory mechanism.