The biomonitoring of the atmosphere matrix, carried out to assess the environmental sustainability of a project, provides indications to estimate the impacts generated by human activities, in particular industrial/oil&gas activities.
If compared to traditional techniques, biomonitoring has the advantage of providing estimates on the combined effects of more pollutants on living beings, has limited costs and allows the analysis of wide areas and diversified territories.
The organisms, including mosses and lichens, may be used to monitor air quality both as biondicators, namely organisms affected by changes in the physiology/morphology/spatial distribution, and as bio-accumulators, namely organisms able to survive in presence of those pollutants they accumulate in their tissues.
In the present case study, the biomonitoring campaign has been carried out in order to identify the phytopathologies of the riparian vegetation and verify the presence of bioaccumulation phenomena on bryophyte (mosses). Simultaneously, a comparison with the bioaccumulation levels was executed on those soils where mosses grow and on collected and analyzed leaf samples, and the analysis of possible chronic phenomena was performed through the application of the lichen biodiversity index.
Biomonitoring, if carried out throughout time, will allow the assessment of the impacts generated by the project, allowing to highlight any other possible air pollution phenomena deriving from other productive facilities.
