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. 2014 May 29;9(5):e97925.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097925. eCollection 2014.

The macroecology of airborne pollen in Australian and New Zealand urban areas

Simon G Haberle  1 , David M J S Bowman  2 , Rewi M Newnham  3 , Fay H Johnston  4 , Paul J Beggs  5 , Jeroen Buters  6 , Bradley Campbell  7 , Bircan Erbas  8 , Ian Godwin  7 , Brett J Green  9 , Alfredo Huete  10 , Alison K Jaggard  5 , Danielle Medek  11 , Frank Murray  12 , Ed Newbigin  13 , Michel Thibaudon  14 , Don Vicendese  8 , Grant J Williamson  2 , Janet M Davies  15
Affiliations

The macroecology of airborne pollen in Australian and New Zealand urban areas

Simon G Haberle et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The composition and relative abundance of airborne pollen in urban areas of Australia and New Zealand are strongly influenced by geographical location, climate and land use. There is mounting evidence that the diversity and quality of airborne pollen is substantially modified by climate change and land-use yet there are insufficient data to project the future nature of these changes. Our study highlights the need for long-term aerobiological monitoring in Australian and New Zealand urban areas in a systematic, standardised, and sustained way, and provides a framework for targeting the most clinically significant taxa in terms of abundance, allergenic effects and public health burden.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Land cover attribute for Australia and New Zealand with climatological summaries for each major urban centre associated with an aerobiology study.
Climate summaries include average monthly precipitation and minimum and maximum temperatures for each urban area (see Table 3 for data sources). Data shown for Whangarei represents the Kaikohe pollen count site.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Climate summary and daily airborne pollen (Poaceae and Non-native arboreal taxa) for Canberra (26 Sept 2007–31 Dec 2009).
Pollen season is depicted by the shaded columns and defined by 90% of the airborne pollen falling in this time for each year (July 1 to June 30). Climate data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Ranking for top 20 pollen taxa based on average percentage representation of airborne pollen areas across all urban areas (black bars).
These urban areas are then grouped into regional biogeographic zones (blank space = taxa not recorded). Australian Tropical/Subtropical = Darwin, Brisbane; Australian Temperate = Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart; NZ North = Kaikohe, Auckland; NZ South = Christchurch, Dunedin.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination (nMDS) of the major pollen taxa in Australia and New Zealand.
(A) Distribution of urban areas using a matrix of percentage representation of major pollen taxa (see Table 2 and using top eight pollen taxa at each site). The pie charts depict the relative contribution of the most abundant pollen taxa in each urban area. (B) Distribution of pollen taxa contributing to the differentiation of aerobiology of each urban area Note: coloured squares associated with each taxa depicted in (B) match the pie chart colours shown in (A), with diamonds showing taxa with a low percentage representation. The vectors (dotted lines) for the environmental variables show positions for each variable within the environmental space. Longer vectors (higher r2 values, see Table 3) indicate a stronger association of the environmental variable with site/species variation in the ordination space.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Pollen calendar for aerobiologically significant pollen taxa (contributing 80%+ to the annual atmospheric pollen) in Australian and New Zealand urban areas.
The pie charts are divided into monthly segments with the red shade depicting the pollen season for each taxa to the nearest month in a given urban area. The pollen season for each taxon is determined using the period encompassing 90% of the annual pollen rain (see Figure 2).
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