Epiphytic Lichens

Students around the world have helped monitor the loss of lichen species due to air pollution. In the last few decades scientists and school children from Europe, especially England, Ireland, and Italy, have used lichen surveys to make local air pollution maps, often locating lichen deserts, areas stripped of their lichens„in the center of cities. Because lichen changes take place over years, these studies have opften been paired with studies of leaf yeasts, organisms which are also injured by sulfur dioxide pollution, but respond in a matter of days to atmospheric changes.

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