Assessment of Dust Deposition through Image Analysis in Complex and Remote Exhibition Sites: Study in the Cloister of the Santa María de El Paular Monastery in the Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain

Abstract

Dust deposition is an important aspect of the conservation of heritage collections. Most proposed methods for dust monitoring focus on total area coverage or airborne concentrations. There is a lack of published data and methodologies to obtain size distributions of deposited particles on real historic sites. The purpose of the study was to develop and describe a method for obtaining quantitative data from dust deposition without the need for sophisticated laboratory equipment, based on optical microscopy photography and software-based image analysis. Bare microscope slides were used as passive collectors of dust. Tests were carried out on a collection of oil paintings displayed in the cloister of the Monastery of Santa María de El Paular in the Sierra de Guadarrama in Spain for one year, with a distance of 100 km between this place and the laboratory. The designed method allowed for the detection of significant differences in deposition depending on the location and seasonal period. Vertically orientated bare slides did not provide relevant information and a magnification of 50× was not really useful. However, horizontal collectors and a magnification of 10× allowed studying the deposition of particles above 2 μm2.