title: Comparing estimates of EMEP MSC-W and UFORE models in air pollutant reduction by urban trees.
abstract: There is a growing interest to identify and quantify the benefits provided by the presence of trees in urban environment in order to improve the environmental quality in cities. However, the evaluation and estimate of plant efficiency in removing atmospheric pollutants is rather complicated, because of the high number of factors involved and the difficulty of estimating the effect of the interactions between the different components. In this study, the EMEP MSC-W model was implemented to scale-down to tree-level and allows its application to an industrial-urban green area in Northern Italy. Moreover, the annual outputs were compared with the outputs of UFORE (nowadays i-Tree), a leading model for urban forest applications. Although, EMEP/MSC-W model and UFORE are semi-empirical models designed for different applications, the comparison, based on O3, NO2 and PM10 removal, showed a good agreement in the estimates and highlights how the down-scaling methodology presented in this study may have significant opportunities for further developments.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agro-Environmental & Forest Biology (IBAF), National Research Council (CNR), Via Marconi 2, I-05010, Porano, TR, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Guidolotti
authors.affiliation: Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry (LEAF), University of Padova, Viale dell'Università 16, 35020, Legnaro, PD, Italy.
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salviato
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agro-Environmental & Forest Biology (IBAF), National Research Council (CNR), Via Marconi 2, I-05010, Porano, TR, Italy. carlo.calfapietra@ibaf.cnr.it.|Global Change Research Centre, Bělidla 986/4a, 603 00, Brno, Czech Republic. carlo.calfapietra@ibaf.cnr.it.
authors.forename: Carlo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Calfapietra
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D002947:Cities; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D007558:Italy; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014197:Trees / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants
keywords: Atmospheric pollutants; NO2; O3; PM10; UFORE, EMEP/MSC-W model; Urban forest; i-Tree