Increasing resolution of airborne pollen forecasting at a discrete sampled area in the southwest Mediterranean Basin A. Picornell a , J. Oteros b , M.M. Trigo a , D. Gharbi a , S. Docampo Fern  andez a , M. Melgar Caballero a , F.J. Toro a , J. García-S  anchez c , R. Ruiz-Mata a , B. Cabezudo a , M. Recio a, * a Department of Plant Biology, University of Malaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, Malaga, E-29071, Spain b Center of Allergy & Environment (ZAUM), Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Technische Universit€ at München/Helmholtz Center, Munich, Germany c Central Services of Support to Investigation (SCAI), University of Malaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, Malaga, E-29071, Spain highlights graphical abstract  Airborne pollen levels can be esti- mated at unsampled locations.  Databases of sampling stations can be completed with data from neigh- bour stations.  The Compensated Thermicity Index can be used to elaborate atmospheric pollen maps. article info Article history: Received 25 February 2019 Received in revised form 27 May 2019 Accepted 2 June 2019 Available online 5 June 2019 Handling Editor: Dr. R Ebinghaus Keywords: Aerobiology Kriging techniques Pollen maps Modelling Spatial interpolation Phenology abstract Daily fluctuations of the airborne pollen concentrations produce variations on symptomatology in allergic population. Such fluctuations are influenced by local vegetal coverage, flowering phenology, geography and climatology. Since 1991, airborne pollen of Malaga province (southern Spain) has been monitored in 7 different locations. Malaga station has been kept operational uninterruptedly throughout the studied period, while the rest of the stations only worked in periods of 2e4 years. Weekly, its pollen information is updated online to inform the population in order to prevent allergic diseases. Increasing the spatial resolution of pollen information would be very useful for allergic population living at unsampled locations. Due to the impossibility of keeping operational a high number of pollen stations covering the whole province of Malaga, the aim of this study is to create spatial models to extrapolate and forecast the pollen concentrations to Malaga province by using the concentrations registered at the capital as unique input. To do so, the relationships obtained between the airborne pollen concentrations detected at Malaga city and those detected at the other stations have been used to elaborate models for the main pollen types registered at the province. These models were spatially interpolated all over the province by using co-kriging techniques and the Compensated Thermicity Index as covariable. As result of this work, pollen distribution of the 8 most prevalent taxa has been depicted all over the whole Malaga province and an allergy alert system has been set up to extrapolate pollen information from Malaga to the whole province. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. * Corresponding author. Departamento de Biología Vegetal, Universidad de M alaga, Campus de Teatinos s/n, M alaga, E-29071, Spain. E-mail address: martarc@uma.es (M. Recio). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Chemosphere journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2019.06.019 0045-6535/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Chemosphere 234 (2019) 668e681