Investigation of the relationship between air pollutant concentrations with vegetation index (NDVI)

Subject Areas : Natural resources and environmental management

Ali Soleymani Damaneh ¹ , Abolhassan Gheiby ² , Abbasali Aliakbari Bidokhti ³ , Hossein Malakooti ⁴ , Hadi Eskandari Damaneh ⁵

1 - PhD. Student of Meteorology, Faculty of Marine Science and Technology, University of Hormozgan, Iran
2 - Department of physics, faculty of Science, university of hormozgan, Bandar abbas, Iran
3 - Professor, Department of Space Physics, Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
4 - Associate Professor, Department of Non-Biological Sciences, Faculty of Marine Science and Technology, University of Hormozgan, Hormozgan, Iran
5 - PhD. Desertification, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Hormozgan, Hormozgan, Iran

Received: 2022-03-16 Accepted : 2022-06-07 Published : 2022-06-07

Keywords: OMI, NDVI, Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Iran,

Abstract :

ABSTRACT Sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are the most important air pollutants that have reduced world air quality. The sources of these pollutants are mainly man-made activities such as transportation, industry and other industrial applications, which due to the increase in these activities in developing countries,. In this study, we use the SO2 and NO2 column concentration data, which are collected by Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) during the 14 years (2005-2018). By examining the vertical column concentration of SO2 and NO2 and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) during the 14-year period (2005-2008) over Iran using Mann-Kendall Test and Theil-Sen estimator. We were able to estimate the increase or decrease trends of the growth of these quantities which seem also to have a positive or negative correlation with each other in certain areas. For example, metropolises as well as industrial areas had a significant upward trend, while some areas also had a decreasing trend during these 14 years. Among all of the study area, Tehran metropolis had the highest trend increase during these 14 years, so that every year we witness an ever increasing value of these pollutions. Examining the correlation of these pollutants with vegetation index, we found that in 61.07% of Iran, there is a positive correlation between vegetation index and gas concentration NO_2and 38.93% shows a negative correlation in certain areas. For SO_2 pollutant, it shows 58.36% positive correlation with vegetation index and 41.64% negative correlation in some areas. . This indicate that other factors are also involved as precipitation changes in different areas of Iran. In the desert areas of the center and east of the country, there is a positive correlation between vegetation index and NO2 pollutants. Rainfall is also low and consequently the vegetation of the area will be poor.