Near-ground Effect of Height on Pollen Exposure

Rojo, J., Oteros, J., Pérez-Badia, R., Cervigón, P., Ferencova, Z., Gutiérrez-Bustillo, A.M., Bergmann, K-C., Oliver, G., Thibaudon, M., Albertini, R., Rodriguez-De la Cruz, D., Sánchez-Reyes, E., Sánchez-Sánchez, J., Pessi, A.M., Reiniharju, J., Saarto, A., Galderón, M.C., Guerrero, C., Berra, D., Bonini, M., Chiodini, E., Fernández-González, D., Garcia, J., Trigo, M.M., Myszkowska, D., Fernández-Rodríguez, S., Tormo-Molina, R., Damialis, A., Haering, F., Traidl-Hoffmann, C., Severova, E., Caeiro, E., Ribeiro, H., Magyar, D., Makra, L., Udvardy, O., Alcázar, P., Galán, C., Borycka, K., Kasprzyk, I., Newbigin, E., Adams-Groom, Beverley ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1097-8876, Apangu, Godfrey ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0707-8754, Frisk, Carl A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9722-2544, Skjøth, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5992-9568, Radišić, P., Šikoparija, B, Celenk, S., Schmidt-Weber, C. and Buters, J. (2019) Near-ground Effect of Height on Pollen Exposure. Environmental Research, 174. pp. 160-169. ISSN 0013-9351

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Abstract

The effect of height on pollen concentration is not well documented and little is known about the near-ground
vertical profile of airborne pollen. This is important as most measuring stations are on roofs, but patient
exposure is at ground level. Our study used a big data approach to estimate the near-ground vertical profile
of pollen concentrations based on a global study of paired stations located at different heights. We
analyzed paired sampling stations located at different heights between 1.5 and 50m above ground level (AGL). This provided pollen data from 59 Hirst-type volumetric traps
from 25 different areas, mainly in Europe, but also covering North America and Australia, resulting in about
2,000,000 daily pollen concentrations analyzed. The daily ratio of the amounts of pollen from different heights
per location was used, and the values of the lower station were divided by the higher station. The lower station
of paired traps recorded more pollen than the higher trap. However, while the effect of height on pollen concentration
was clear, it was also limited (average ratio 1.3, range 0.7–2.2). The standard deviation of the pollen
ratio was highly variable when the lower station was located close to the ground level (below 10m AGL). We
show that pollen concentrations measured at >10m are representative for background near-ground levels.

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