Lichens as potential indicators of environmental harm

Abstract

Environmental protection is one of the most important issues of our time; thereby there is an increasing
awareness to regulate activities that degrade the environment pollution. Physical and chemical instrumentations provide accurate quantitative data to the various substances that are polluting but do not give a true picture of the extent of contamination that has impact on living organisms. The environmental impact on organisms and its effects on habitat can be detected by bioindicator plants. We chose Cladonia lichen as a biological indicator. We
measured the photosynthetic activity of the algae cells and applied chlorophyll fluorescence induction method
for the detection of environmental impacts. The most harmful toxic elements are Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb and
toxic gases are NO2, SO2. We measured the accumulation of toxic elements in Cladonia lichen populations.
Today, the pollution of our environment is mostly caused by cars. A significant amount of Pb in the air comes
from the exhaust gases of motor vehicles and contaminant are deposited along the roads. The measurement
results confirm that lead contamination have been multiplied by six in the Buda crossing due to the heavy traffic. Transplanted lichen colonies show that the Cd contamination is more than thirty-fold at busy roads than in the National Park. The Cr value also increased by more than double, so it can be stated that mostly roads are blamed for the raise of the level of such toxic elements.