INTEGRAL INDICATOR OF GEOCHEMICAL POLLUTION OF URBAN RECREATIONAL TERRITORIES CAUSED BY MOTOR TRAFFIC

Abstract

The influence of the traffic flows in Kyiv city and harmful substances emissions on the recreational territories was investigated in the paper. A methodology and an integral indicator of the geochemical load on the recreational territories by vehicles and components of their emissions were developed. The integral indicator takes into account (depending on the type of the recreation area and people activity): levels of atmospheric air pollution, contamination of soil and surface waters, as well as bioindicational indicators of the investigated territory. The methods of mathematical statistics, mathematical modeling, field observations, empirical studies and computational experiment have been applied in order to calculate the integral indicator of the geochemical load on the urban recreational territories. In order to determine the pollution of the roadside areas and to predict the ecological status of the studied territories, the semi-empirical equation of turbulent diffusion was used, taking into account the fact that the processes of dispersion and local concentration of harmful impurities in certain parts of the territory are affected by the direction and speed of wind, meteorological conditions, physicochemical properties of pollutants, various processes of their secondary transformation in the environment, as well as the conditions of sedimentation and secondary mechanical settling. On the bases of the solution of this equation, the dispersion fields of hazardous substances that are ingredients of exhaust gases of vehicles (in particular, nitrogen and carbon oxides, fine dust) were built taking into account dangerous wind direction and speed. By the integral indicator, it was determined that the studied roadside recreational territories in many cases are potentially dangerous for human health due to the harmful effects of the motor traffic flows.