ANALISI DELLA RISPOSTA DEL BIOMONITORAGGIO DI METALLI IN TRACCIA MEDIANTE L’UTILIZZO DI LICHENI IN CAMPAGNE DI STUDIO CONDOTTE IN CONDIZIONI CLIMATICHE DIFFERENTI

The results of a biomonitoring surveys carried on in Palermo using the accumulation of heavy metals in lichens, thalli of Xanthoria s.l. as indicators of air pollution are reported in this work. Beginning from the data of 38 simple sites shed on Palermo’s territory, has been developed a study of the air pollution in the centre of the town, the target of this work is to know the existing relationship between the concentration of heavy metals study area and the possible pollution sources as industry, shipyards, vehicles etc. In order to recuperate most information of the territory, the development of this work has been carried on with a new technology for the data management: the GIS (Geographical Information System). With this software has been possible to create a general georeferencing database with the data of the air pollution in the studied areas, an important function of this instrument is the possibility to overlapping theme with different information (geographical, geologic, climatic, ecological, etc) on same topographic map. With this function is possible to know new and more information on the investigation area and the interaction of different aspects of the territory. For the interpretation of the data, two-dimensional zone maps were drawn using the GIS program ArcView 8.3 (ESRI- Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.-), that with a specific extension (3D ANALYST) transforms discrete data into a continuous distributional model.