The Role of Vegetation on Urban Atmosphere of Three European Cities. Part 2: Evaluation of Vegetation Impact on Air Pollutant Concentrations and Depositions

Abstract

This is the first study that quantifies explicitly the impact of present vegetation on concentrations and depositions, considering simultaneously its effects on meteorology, biogenic emissions, dispersion, and dry deposition in three European cities: Bologna, Milan, and Madrid. The behaviour of three pollutants (O3, NO2, and PM10) was investigated considering two different scenarios, with the actual vegetation (VEG) and without it (NOVEG) for two months, representative of summer and winter seasons: July and January. The evaluation is based on simulations performed with two state-of-the-art atmospheric modelling systems (AMS) that use similar but not identical descriptions of physical and chemical atmospheric processes: AMS-MINNI for the two Italian cities and WRF-CMAQ for the Spanish city. The choice of using two AMS and applying one of them in two cities has been made to ensure the robustness of the results needed for their further generalization. The analysis of the spatial distribution of the vegetation effects on air concentrations and depositions shows that they are highly variable from one grid cell to another in the city area, with positive/negative effects or high/low effects in adjacent cells being observed for the three pollutants investigated in all cities. According to the pollutant, on a monthly basis, the highest differences in concentrations (VEG-NOVEG) produced by vegetation were estimated in July for O3 (−7.40 μg/m3 in Madrid and +2.67 μg/m3 in Milan) and NO2 (−3.01 μg/m3 in Milan and +7.17 μg/m3 in Madrid) and in January for PM10 (−3.14 μg/m3 in Milan +2.01 μg/m3 in Madrid). Thus, in some parts of the cities, the presence of vegetation had produced an increase in pollutant concentrations despite its efficient removal action that ranges from ca. 17% for O3 in Bologna (January) to ca. 77% for NO2 in Madrid (July).