Changes in climate and land-use may elicit an increased emission of allergenic pollen amounts in the air, causing a rise in respiratory allergies and affecting public health more than previously... Show moreChanges in climate and land-use may elicit an increased emission of allergenic pollen amounts in the air, causing a rise in respiratory allergies and affecting public health more than previously thought. Here we have used a well -established pollen transport model SILAM (System for Integrated modeLling of Atmospheric coMposition) for attributing the long-term changes in airborne pollen concentrations of birches and grasses to climate change and vegetation dynamics. The pollen transport model is applied for Belgium and is driven by ECMWF ERA5 mete-orological data (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, fifth generation of ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis of the global climate). The dynamic vegetation components of the model are based on multi-decadal datasets for 1982-2019 on spatially distributed birch and grass pollen emission sources. For each model gridcell we have computed the change rate of the seasonal birch and grass pollen cycles based on daily pollen concen-trations, and of the daily meteorological model input. Finally, the gridcell based association between trends in pollen and climate change are derived. Our findings show that during the period 1982-2019 a strong increase in birch pollen concentrations is associated with increasing radiation, decreasing precipitation and decreasing horizontal wind speed near the surface. A strong decrease of grass pollen concentrations over time is driven by a decreasing trend in grass pollen sources, and it is also associated with decreasing precipitation. The magnitude of the associations between meteorology and airborne birch pollen concentrations are almost twice the association between meteorology and grass pollen, and the spatial variations are substantial even on the scales of small countries. The specific contribution of birch tree and pollen production dynamics to the concentrations of birch pollen in the air over time is highly associated with wind speed and precipitation. Introducing the inter-seasonal variation in birch pollen production during the period 1982-2019 intensifies the climate induced increase of airborne birch pollen concentrations with-6%. In contrast, the grass pollen production dynamics resulted into-10 times less grass pollen over the studied period compared to climate change effects. Show less
Polling, M.; Sin, M.; Weger, L.A. de; Speksnijder, A.G.C.L.; Koenders, M.J.F.; Boer, H. de; Gravendeel, B. 2022
Airborne pollen monitoring is of global socio-economic importance as it provides information on presence and prevalence of allergenic pollen in ambient air. Traditionally, this task has been... Show moreAirborne pollen monitoring is of global socio-economic importance as it provides information on presence and prevalence of allergenic pollen in ambient air. Traditionally, this task has been performed by microscopic investigation, but novel techniques are being developed to automate this process. Among these, DNA metabarcoding has the highest potential of increasing the taxonomic resolution, but uncertainty exists about whether the results can be used to quantify pollen abundance. In this study, it is shown that DNA metabarcoding using trnL and nrITS2 provides highly improved taxonomic resolution for pollen from aerobiological samples from the Netherlands. A total of 168 species from 143 genera and 56 plant families were detected, while using a microscope only 23 genera and 22 plant families were identified. NrITS2 produced almost double the number of OTUs and a much higher percentage of identifications to species level (80.1%) than trnL (27.6%). Furthermore, regressing relative read abundances against the relative abundances of microscopically obtained pollen concentrations showed a better correlation for nrITS2 (R-2= 0.821) than for trnL (R-2 = 0.620). Using three target taxa commonly encountered in early spring and fall in the Netherlands (Alnus sp., Cupressaceae/Taxaceae and Urticaceae) the nrITS2 results showed that all three taxa were dominated by one or two species (Alnus glutinosa/incana, Taxus baccata and Urtica dioica). Highly allergenic as well as artificial hybrid species were found using nrITS2 that could not be identified using trnL or microscopic investigation (Alnus x spaethii, Cupressus arizonica, Parietaria spp.). Furthermore, perMANOVA analysis indicated spatiotemporal patterns in airborne pollen trends that could be more clearly distinguished for all taxa using nrITS2 rather than trnL. All results indicate that nrITS2 should be the preferred marker of choice for molecular airborne pollen monitoring. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Show less
