RT Journal Article
T1 Establishment of background pollution levels and spatial analysis of moss data on a regional scale
A1 Giráldez Suárez, Pablo
A1 Crujeiras Casais, Rosa María
A1 Fernández Escribano, José Ángel
A1 Aboal Viñas, Jesús
K1 Atmospheric pollution
K1 Biomonitoring
K1 Bryophytes
K1 Heavy metals
K1 Mercury
K1 Normal mixture model
AB The determination of background pollution levels is fundamental for the interpretation of the results obtained from environmental biomonitoring. In this paper we propose a new probabilistic method, based on a Gaussian mixture model, for determining the distribution of regional background levels of different pollutants. The distribution of the reference level is used to categorize the observations as “background” or “above-background” and spatial statistical techniques are then applied to determine the probability of the background level being exceeded. To exemplify its use, we applied the method to concentrations of five potentially toxic elements (Cd, Cu, Hg, Pb and Zn) measured in the moss Pseudoscleropodium purum. The proposed method was applied to data resulting from sampling at ca. 150 sampling stations in a regular grid (15 × 15 km) in Galicia (NW Spain). Sampling was carried out in June in 2000 and 2002, and in March and September in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2014. The proposed method yielded consistent results for all of the different sampling surveys, and the pollution levels were found to be closely related to the sources of pollution identified in the study region. In short, although not an optimal solution, the proposed method seems to be suitable and realistic for the qualitative assessment of regional pollution
PB Elsevier
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/29080
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/29080
LA eng
NO Science of The Total Environment 839 (2022) 156182
NO J. R. Aboal, J. A. Fernández and P. Giráldez belong to the Grupo de Referencia Competitiva GRC GI-1252/GPC2020-23 (ED431C 2020/19) which is co-funded by ERDF (EU). Authors would like to thank RIAIDT-USC for the use of analytical facilities. P. Giráldez is grateful to the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades for a grant awarded within the Programa de Formacion de Profesorado Universitario (FPU 2018 [grant number FPU18/04134]). Research of R. M. Crujeiras has been supported by MINECO (Grant PID2020-116587GB-100), and by Xunta de Galicia (Grupos de Referencia Competitiva ED431C 2021/24), all of them through the ERDF
DS Minerva
RD 27 abr 2026