Lichen Diversity Increasing Over the Past Seven Years Amid Stable Air Quality

Elijah Matos, Avni Pande, Sumaiya Ahmed

This project aimed to test for correlations between decreasing AQI and lichen diversity over the past seven years in the NY metropolitan area’s 23 counties. We found a continuous increase in lichen diversity alongside a relatively stable AQI, with no correlation between the two made evident. We used the median AQI values made available by the EPA and the species observations done by the community on iNaturalist, a platform for sharing images of plant and animal species. Because of our lack of correlation and short window for analysis, we would suggest using a long stretch of time for data, testing for correlations between the increase in lichen species and other factors like climate, soil chemistry, and atmospheric conditions.

We found this topic important to research because air pollution, which is especially prevalent in urban areas, is not only known to impact humans negatively but the rest of the ecosystem as well. Within the scientific community, lichen diversity is known to be an indicator of air pollution and tends to have an inverse relationship with air quality. So, given the urban conditions of the New York Metropolitan area, we can assume that air pollution has likely been high for many years in the 23 counties. Therefore, we decided to research to see if lichen species and their potential relationship to air quality can give us an indication as to whether changes have been made since the industrial revolution.