Lichen based index to nitrogen air quality guide | Winter Nature Spotting Field Studies Council

Luke is back with his nature videos - this time capturing some wonderful winter wildlife for us to explore. Take a look at how he is using our guide to determine the pollution present in a local wood!
bit.ly/3JLYMnO

[@tikaanipippin]

Sorry, the major component of the earth's atmosphere is molecular nitrogen at about 78%. Nitrogen is not a pollutant. If you are talking about nitrogen oxides, that is a different matter, but lichens are 100% tolerant of nitrogen in air so long as there is water vapour, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. They also require some nitrogen oxides, phosphates, and sulfur for their biochemical metabolic processes, as well as some other elements in trace amounts.

[@Sodabowski]

My guess is that he really meant "nitrates" 🙄

[@user-ju7dx8mu6d]

Grass is part fungus and part plant and grows all the way from the polar regions to the hottest and coldest deserts. Pretty much the same as lichen. Lichens are pretty cool but it has nothing to do with them being a symbiosis between fungus and something else as that is pretty much the norm in the plant kingdom. Maybe they are cool because they can be bone dry and dormant and two minutes after a rain they are photosynthesizing and growing which allows them to survive in very short wet interval environments where little else can grow?

[@Sodabowski]

Lichens are a fungus and an alga in symbiosis, actually..