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A statistical approach to bioclimatic trend detection in the airborne pollen records of Catalonia (NE Spain)

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Abstract

Airborne pollen records are a suitable indicator for the study of climate change. The present work focuses on the role of annual pollen indices for the detection of bioclimatic trends through the analysis of the aerobiological spectra of 11 taxa of great biogeographical relevance in Catalonia over an 18-year period (1994–2011), by means of different parametric and non-parametric statistical methods. Among others, two non-parametric rank-based statistical tests were performed for detecting monotonic trends in time series data of the selected airborne pollen types and we have observed that they have similar power in detecting trends. Except for those cases in which the pollen data can be well-modeled by a normal distribution, it is better to apply non-parametric statistical methods to aerobiological studies. Our results provide a reliable representation of the pollen trends in the region and suggest that greater pollen quantities are being liberated to the atmosphere in the last years, specially by Mediterranean taxa such as Pinus, Total Quercus and Evergreen Quercus, although the trends may differ geographically. Longer aerobiological monitoring periods are required to corroborate these results and survey the increasing levels of certain pollen types that could exert an impact in terms of public health.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank to different projects and entities for financing this study: COST ES0603 EUPOL; Laboratorios LETI S.A.; European Commission for “ENV4-CT98-0755”; Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology I + D + I for “AMB97-0457-CO7-021”, “REN2001-10659-CO3-01”, “CGL2004-21166-E”, “CGL2005-07543/CLI”, “CGL2009-11205”, “MTM2009-08869”, FEDER, and CONSOLIDER CSD 2007_00067 GRACCIE; also the Catalan Government AGAUR for “2002SGR00059”, “2005SGR00519” and “2009SGR1102”. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for careful reading and very helpful comments that resulted in an overall improvement of the paper.

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  1. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Jordina Belmonte & Concepción De Linares

  2. Departament de Biologia Animal, Biologia Vegetal i Ecologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Jordina Belmonte & Concepción De Linares

  3. Departament de Matemàtiques, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Rosario Delgado

  4. Edifici C, despatx C1-219, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Jordina Belmonte

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  1. Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares
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Correspondence to Jordina Belmonte.

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Fernández-Llamazares, Á., Belmonte, J., Delgado, R. et al. A statistical approach to bioclimatic trend detection in the airborne pollen records of Catalonia (NE Spain). Int J Biometeorol 58, 371–382 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-013-0632-4

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