Monitoring H2S air pollution caused by the industrial exploitation of geothermal energy: The pitfall of using lichens as bioindicators

This study showed that NH3 emitted from geothermal power plants affects the surrounding epiphytic lichen vegetation and diversity, confounding the interpretation of lichen diversity counts in terms of air pollution by H2S. The presence of nitrophytic lichen species around geothermal installations, determined by NH3, caused relatively high diversity values that were not related with the levels of air pollution by H2S. It is recommended that in the presence of NH3 emission, nitrophytic species are excluded from the calculation of lichen diversity values. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.