Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Traces of Harmattan Mineral Dust as Measured by Epiphytic Lichens in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality, Upper-East, Ghana
1Sam-Quarcoo Dotse, 2Gideon Mensah Engmann and 1Aaron N. Adazabra
1Department of Physics, Faculty of Applied Sciences
2Department of Statistics, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, University for Development Studies, P.O. Box 24, Navrongo, Upper East, Ghana
Research Journal of Environmental and Earth Sciences 2014 10:482-485
Received: July 24, 2014 | Accepted: September 13, 2014 | Published: October 20, 2014
Abstract
The lichen biomonitoring technique was used to study trace element atmospheric deposition in the Kassena-Nankana municipality of Ghana. Seven short and medium lived trace elements (Na, Al, K, Ca, V, Mn and Mg) were determined by instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis and subjected to statistical analysis. Principal component analysis was used to identify and characterize different sources of pollution. The results of linear regression correlation test and Principal component analysis points to harmattan mineral dust as the main source of atmospheric deposition in the area.
Keywords:
Atmospheric depositions, epiphytic lichen, harmattan mineral dust, neutron activation analysis, principal component analysis, trace elements,
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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ISSN (Online): 2041-0492
ISSN (Print): 2041-0484 |
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