Abstract
High altitudes have been exposed to enhanced levels of surface ozone (O3) concentrations over recent decades compared to the pre-industrial era. The responses of vegetation to this toxic pollutant are species-specific and depend on the climate conditions. In this paper, we explored the reaction of Pinus mugo (P. mugo) to O3-induced stress in the continental climate of an ozone-rich mountain area in the High Tatra Mountains (Western Carpathians). The effects of O3 doses modelled by a deposition model, O3 concentrations and other factors on P. mugo were identified from (a) satellite-based data via NDVI (normalised differenced vegetation index) over 2000–2020 and (b) visible injury on needle samples gathered from P. mugo individuals at ground-truth sites in 2019 and 2020. Analysing the NDVI trend, we observed non-significant changes (p > 0.05) in the greenness of P. mugo despite growing in an environment with the average seasonal O3 concentration around 51.6 ppbv, the maximum hourly concentrations more than 90 ppbv and increasing trend of O3 doses by 0.1 mmol m−2 PLA (plant leaf area) year−1. The visible O3 injury of samples collected at study sites was low (mean injury observed on 1–10% of needles’ surface), and the symptoms of injury caused by other biotic and abiotic factors prevailed over those caused by O3. In addition, the correlation analyses between NDVI and the climatic factors indicated a significant (p < 0.05) and positive relationship with photosynthetic active radiation (R = 0.45) in July, and with stomatal conductance (R = 0.52) and temperature factor (R = 0.43) in August. Therefore, we concluded that the positive effect of climate conditions, which support the growth processes of P. mugo, may suppress the negative effect of the mean O3 doses of 17.8 mmol m−2 PLA accumulated over the growing season.
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This work was supported by the project of the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic and Slovak Academy of Sciences VEGA 2/0093/21. Veronika Lukasová acknowledges support from the Stefan Schwarz fund for postdoctoral researchers awarded by the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Veronika Lukasová, Svetlana Bičárová, Katarína Adamčíková and Anna Buchholcerová. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Veronika Lukasová and all authors commented on all versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Lukasová, V., Bičárová, S., Buchholcerová, A. et al. Low sensitivity of Pinus mugo to surface ozone pollution in the subalpine zone of continental Europe. Int J Biometeorol 66, 2311–2324 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02359-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-022-02359-2