Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

J. N. B. Bell is the editor of Air Pollution and Plant Life, 2nd Edition, published by Wiley.

M. Treshow is the editor of Air Pollution and Plant Life, 2nd Edition, published by Wiley.

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Air pollution affects every living organism, including all kinds of vegetation on which we depend for survival. The second edition of this standard reference textbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the direct and indirect impacts of air pollution on plant life. Written by an international team of experts, the book also covers the main historical aspects and sources of pollutants, atmospheric transport and transformations of pollutants, and issues of global change and the use of science in air pollution policy formulation.

Air Pollution and Plant Life Second Edition is a unique text in several ways:
* covering all the main phytotoxic pollutants with due consideration given to impacts at all levels of plant organisation from molecular to ecological.

* emphasising the effects of air pollutants in altering plant response to common stresses, both abiotic and biotic - fields in which considerable progress has been made since publication of the first edition.

* and including coverage of how research leads to pollution control policy development.
Air Pollution and Plant Life Second Edition is essential reading for students in Environmental Science, Biological Science and Agriculture, as well as environmental consultants and professionals involved in air quality research and the application of air quality guidelines and advice.

Aus dem Klappentext

Air pollution affects every living organism, including all kinds of vegetation on which we depend for survival. The second edition of this standard reference textbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the direct and indirect impacts of air pollution on plant life. Written by an international team of experts, the book also covers the main historical aspects and sources of pollutants, atmospheric transport and transformations of pollutants, and issues of global change and the use of science in air pollution policy formulation.

Air Pollution and Plant Life Second Edition is a unique text in several ways:
* covering all the main phytotoxic pollutants with due consideration given to impacts at all levels of plant organisation from molecular to ecological.

* emphasising the effects of air pollutants in altering plant response to common stresses, both abiotic and biotic - fields in which considerable progress has been made since publication of the first edition.

* and including coverage of how research leads to pollution control policy development.
Air Pollution and Plant Life Second Edition is essential reading for students in Environmental Science, Biological Science and Agriculture, as well as environmental consultants and professionals involved in air quality research and the application of air quality guidelines and advice.

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Air Pollution and Plant Life

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

J.N.B. BELL AND M. TRESHOW

It is 18 years since the first edition of this book was produced. Now we have reached the millennium it is timely to produce a new totally revised second edition. Since 1984 massive changes have occurred in the areas of concern in the general field of air pollution impacts on plant life, with a range of new issues appearing on the research agenda. Furthermore, over the same period there has been a major expansion of higher education in the general field of environmental science, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Thus we felt that it was highly opportune to produce a new edition which is aimed primarily at final year undergraduates and Masters students, as well as providing a comprehensive introduction for PhD students and other research workers entering this field for the first time. We were also very keen to produce a publication with a purchase price within the average student's pocket. Over the last 10 years or so a number of books on air pollution effects on vegetation have been published. However, these all tend either to contain a series of chapters on particular specialist topics or are strongly biased towards certain aspects of the field, and thus we believe this second edition fills a niche in the market and hope that it will prove as popular as its predecessor.

At the time of the publication of the first edition, the great bulk of research was concerned with impacts of S[O.sub.2], N[O.sub.2] and [O.sub.3] on crop productivity in the developed world, particularly North America. Thus the National Crop Loss Assessment Network (NCLAN) programme was in full swing, utilising open-top chambers and dose/response and economic models to attempt an assessment of monetary losses arising from air pollutant induced reductions of major crops across the USA as a whole. At the same time much of the research into effects on crops in Europe was piecemeal with a lack of international, and in most cases, national integration. It was not until a year or two later that the European equivalent of NCLAN emerged, in the form of the European Open-Top Chambers Network (EOTCN). In fact the latter coincided with a general fall in interest in most European countries as well as in North America on the subject of air pollution impacts on agricultural crops: in the USA the NCLAN programme had cost a lot of money but produced some definitive results, while agricultural surpluses in western Europe doubtless mitigated against much concern for this problem.

As interest in crops declined, it was more than counteracted by a massive increase into research on the effects of air pollutants on forest trees. This had been the subject of some of the earliest research on air pollution impacts on vegetation in Germany in the nineteenth century (see Chapter 2) and continued over the first three-quarters of the twentieth century in both Europe and North America. However, much of this research was largely devoted to problems around point sources or very close to industrial areas, with the exception of the growing concerns from the 1960s onwards of widespread oxidant damage to forests in the USA, particularly in California. The appearance of a mysterious apparent decline in forest health in Germany, followed by elsewhere in Europe, and also in North America resulted in a massive switch towards research into impacts of air pollution on trees. Large research programmes were inaugurated in both continents, accompanied by a concomitant decline in crop research. This issue was driven by powerful political forces, not the least in Europe and the issue remains far from resolved and it has been argued strongly that a non-existent problem was being addressed (see Chapter 15). An examination of our first edition indicates a low profile for this issue: there was one chapter on 'long range transport of air pollutants and acid precipitation', otherwise no further indication of the subject. Thus in this new edition we have attempted to address this important subject via Chapter 16, covering acidification effects on aquatic vegetation and Chapter 15 on 'Forest Decline'. In the most recent years attention has moved on to some extent from trees to other forms of natural vegetation. This is primarily concerned with ozone in view of its widespread rural distribution, this being covered in Chapter 6, and with excess nitrogen deposition (Chapter 12).

As an overview of the book, we will now put the other chapters in context, particularly with respect to developments since 1984. Chapter 2 provides a historical overview of the development of our understanding of air pollution impacts both pre-1984 and up to the present day. Since the first edition the vast bulk of research efforts into air pollution have not been concerned with impacts on vegetation or, at least until recently, on human health. Indeed they have been concerned with the identification, elucidation and quantification of emissions sources and the subsequent dispersion and atmospheric transformation of the pollutants concerned. These subjects are covered in Chapter 3, where the enormous strides in understanding air pollutant pathways and transformations that have taken place in the last 17 years are covered in some depth. These have been driven primarily by concerns over long-distance transboundary air pollution and the requirement to understand who produces what, where it goes to and in what form it reaches sensitive receptors. Equally important is the subject of Chapter 4, which received scant recognition in the first edition. The link between atmospheric burdens and deposition to surfaces, particularly uptake into vegetation, has been subject to major investigation over these years, with new understanding developing on issues such as co-deposition of N[H.sub.3] and acid gases, and the importance of determining fluxes rather than atmospheric concentrations, when developing dose/response models for effects on plants.

Unlike the first edition we have followed these initial chapters with a consideration of impacts of individual major pollutant categories. The realisation since 1984 that oxidants are the major pollutants of concern not only in North America, but also in Europe, as well as increasingly in developing countries (Chapter 21) is reflected in the number of pages devoted to this topic in Chapters 5 and 6, covering physiological/ biochemical and whole plant/community effects, respectively. These chapters are followed by one on nitrogen oxides (Chapter 7), where much of the concern is involved with mixtures with other pollutants (Chapter 14), and on sulphur dioxide (Chapter 8), which many view as a past or minimal problem in the developed world, but is becoming a very serious issue in many developing countries (Chapter 21). Chapter 9 covers fluorides, a topic of considerable concern around specific industries and again, particularly in the developing world, where much of the problem lies in poisoning of herbivorous animals. Since 1984 there has been a spectacular upsurge in research into environmental aspects of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), yet little on their direct effects on vegetation, which may be greater than realised, this subject being covered in Chapter 10. Another little understood area is covered in Chapter 11 - the effects of particulates. This is a topic which has turned full wheel in terms of human health, with a return to the concerns of the 1950s over coal smoke being replaced by those with vehicle emissions and other forms...