APPLICATION OF FLUCTUATING ASYMMETRY METHODS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING IN KAMIANSKE

Abstract

The city of Kamianske has a hazardous environmental situation due to the long and intensive development of industry, whose enterprises emit large amounts of harmful substances into the atmosphere. Therefore, the implementation of continuous environmental monitoring for the city is an urgent task that can be solved by combining instrumental measurement methods with phytoindication methods. The aim of the study is to test the methods of phytoindication in the environmental monitoring system using the indicator of fluctuating asymmetry of the leaf blade of woody plants of the Populus canadensis species and to assess the quality of the environment, taking into account the functional zones of the urban system. A methodology for assessing the quality of the environment by the integral index of the fluctuating asymmetry of the leaf blade of Populus plants has been developed and an assessment scale with different gradient values has been proposed. The integral indicator of the fluctuating asymmetry of the leaf blades of Populus canadensi plants was calculated for 30 experimental plots covering all functional zones of Kamianske. It was determined that the quality of the environment within the industrial zones is characterised as critically polluted with unfavourable conditions for living organisms, which is confirmed by the integral index of fluctuating asymmetry 0,076¸0,104. Settlement areas are characterised as polluted, with an integral index of 0,063¸0,093. In recreational areas, the state of the environment is assessed by a conditional norm of 0,054¸0,066. The results of the average integral index of leaf asymmetry of Populus canadensi plants for a ten-year period for the city of Kamianske were compared, and the lower (0,038±0,002) and upper (0,106±0,003) limits of the index were determined. The dependence of the integral indicator on the volume of pollutant emissions into the atmosphere has been established, which is confirmed by high correlation coefficients r = 0,8¸0,9 at a significance level of p < 0,05. The modelled polynomial trends predict further growth of the integral indicator of fluctuating asymmetry depending on the increase in pollutant emissions.