Pollution is common in urban areas because we as humans do so many different activities that emit things. Urban areas are particularly dusty, from all of the construction, demolition, burning, cooking, grinding, and many other actions that release particles into the air.
A very important source of metal pollution in the area are vehicles. Not only do they burn fuels, many metal parts rub against different materials (like your car’s brakes) releasing fine particles into the air.
Urban forests serve as mitigators for metal air pollution. Tree leaves capture dust and urban forest soils sequester the pollution. However, not all urban forests are equal in their ability to capture dust. Imagine a lonely tree in a parking lot versus a large lush park full of towering trees.
PhD student Robin Truong is working to assess how much leaf area exists in different urban areas and how they control and mitigate dust pollution from road ways.
Robin has conducted LIDAR scans to measure the leaf surface area in several urban forests and collected soils to determine the sequestration of pollution metals.
