Resumen de Application of compositional data analysis in biomonitoring of atmospheric dust precipitation

Z. Ziembik, A. Dołhańczuk Śródka

• Biomonitoring is a method of environmental pollution estimation. It involves the use of living organisms to assess type and degree of environment contamination. One of the species most frequently used in biomonitoring is moss. It accumulates substances deposited from air, among them the dust containing different contaminants. Composition of a precipitate is determined both by distant emission sources and local secondary redeposition. It is highly desirable to differentiate between both deposition components. Distinction between them would be helpful in spatiotemporal characterization of pollution and estimation of its sources. Combustion of fossil fuels and some industrial activities produce large amounts of dust containing radioactive isotopes, which are then deposited on the ground surface. These include natural radioisotopes and their decay products as well as some artificial radioisotopes. In our studies samples of moss and its ground base were collected in Bory Stobrawskie forest, located in southwestern part of Poland. In samples specific activity concentrations of gammaradioactive isotopes Cs-137, K-40, Bi-214 and Pb-210 were determined. The specific activity concentrations were recalculated to mass concentrations. In the results exploration the methods designed for the compositional data analysis were used. In cluster analysis a matrix of distances between points was taken for dissimilarity matrix. To study relationship between the radioisotope concentrations a method based on actual data resampling was proposed.