Ecological Assessment of Particulate Material (PM5 and PM10) in Urban Habitats

Abstract

Trees are especially useful biological indicators. We tested the suitability of tree leaves (Common Lime) to assess PM5 and PM10 deposition in the three summer months of 2018 in Debrecen city, Hungary. We also tested the usefulness of the cheap and simple gravimetric method to assess the PM deposition, and compared to the expensive, but standard laser diffraction method. We found significant differences between the concentrations of PM10 deposited on tree leaves, and on dust traps. A significant difference was found in the concentration of PM5 only in July. A significant difference was also found in the concentration of PM10 among months based on leaves and dust traps. For PM5 there was a significant difference among months based on leaves deposition. We found a significant positive correlation between the PM10 concentration deposited on leaves and on dust traps. A positive correlation was found between the concentration of PM based on the gravimetric and laser diffraction measurement methods. Our findings pointed out the particulate material’s washing by rain from leaves; thus, dust deposition on the surface of leaves is limited. Our results demonstrated that trees play an important role in the mitigation of air pollution, and they are a useful indicator of PM deposition for biomonitoring studies.