BIOMONITORIG ACTIVITIES OF “COMPRENSORIO DI PACE DEL MELA”.ANALYSES OF AIR QUALITY DATA

The “Assessorato Territorio e Ambiente” of the Regional Sicilian Government and the “Ingegneria e Tecnologie Agro Forestali” (ITAF) Department, Palermo University, have been involved in a study (D.R.S. N° 473) concerning the occurrence of environmental pollution by heavy metals in the "Comprensorio territoriale di Pace del Mela". The involved local administrations (“comuni”) in the area of interest are: Condrò, Gualtieri Sicaminò, Milazzo, Pace del Mela, S.Filippo del Mela, Santa Lucia del Mela, San Pier Niceto. Naturalistic aspects and landscape relevance of the “Pace del Mela” area is supported by the existence of three Natural Reserves, twelve Sites of Community Interest (S.I.C.) and a Zone with Special Protection (Z.P.S.). Finally, the proximity of the Etna National Park should be also appropriately considered. The study, started on 8th June 2005, has been concluded one year later after having evaluated all the required polluting elements in selected places of the given land both during the wet and dry seasons. The primary target of this biomonitoring study is the knowledge of the possible environmental pollution by heavy metals in the “Comprensorio del Mela”, mainly through the use of biomonitors of “air quality”. The transport of heavy metals to the studied territory can be attributed to a local winds, to atmospheric circulation and to the interaction of these aspects with the morphology of the territory. In our study, the main network of grid sites has been appropriately sub-divided as follows: GIS (Geographical Information System) technologies have been used for data managing, beginning from the data of each simple sites a general georeferencing database has been obtained which contains information of the air pollution in the studied areas. This database has been imported in a GIS software, in order to produce a GIS In order to know the environmental alteration of the studied area and to interpret the spatial distribution of each chemical element, Natural/Alteration maps and isoconcentration maps have been created. Project of the air pollution in the territory of “Comprensorio del Mela”. 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) which transforms discrete data into a continuous .