RESEARCH ARTICLE Approach to spatialize local to long-range atmospheric metal input (Cd, Cu, Hg, Pb) in epiphytic lichens over a meso-scale area (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, southwestern France) Julien P. G. Barre & Gaëlle Deletraz & Jérôme Frayret & Hervé Pinaly & Olivier F. X. Donard & David Amouroux Received: 5 August 2014 /Accepted: 12 December 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract Geographically based investigations into atmo- spheric bio-monitoring usually provide information on con- centration or occurrence data and spatial trends of specific contaminants over a specified study area. In this work, an original approach based on geographic information system (GIS) was used to establish metal contents (Hg, Cu, Pb, and Cd) in epiphytic lichens from 90 locations as atmospheric bio- monitors over a meso-scale area (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, south- western France). This approach allows the integration of the heterogeneity of the territory and optimization of the sampling sites based on both socioeconomical and geophysical param- eters (hereafter defined as urban, industrial, agricultural, and forested areas). The sampling strategy was first evaluated in several sites (n =15) over different seasons and years in order to follow the temporal variability of the atmospheric metal input in lichens. The results demonstrate that concentration ranges remain constant over different sampling periods in “rural” areas (agricultural and forested). Higher variability is observed in the “anthropized” urban and industrial areas in relation to local atmospheric inputs. In this context, metal concentrations in lichens over the whole study show that (1) Hg and Cd are homogeneous over the whole territory (0.14± 0.04 and 0.38±0.26 mg/kg, respectively), whereas (2) Cu and Pb are more concentrated in “anthropized” areas (9.3 and 11.9 mg/kg, respectively) than in “rural” ones (6.8 and 6.0 mg/kg, respectively) (Kruskall-Wallis, K(Cu)=13.7 and K(Pb)=9.7, p <0.00001). They also showed a significant local enrichment for all metals in many locations in the Pays Basque (West) mainly due to metal and steel industrial activ- ities. This confirms the local contribution of this contamina- tion source over a wider geographic scale. A multiple linear regression model was applied to give an integrated spatialization of the data. This showed significant relation- ships for Pb and Cu (adjusted r 2 of 0.39 and 0.45, respective- ly), especially with regards to variables such as industry and road densities (source factors) and elevation or water balance (remote factors). These results show that an integrated GIS- based sampling strategy can improve biomonitoring data dis- tribution and allows better differentiation of local and long- range contamination. Keywords Lichens . Bio-monitoring . GIS . Mercury . Lead . Spatialization . Land-use Introduction Geophysical or geographical parameters are mainly used for bio-indication using lichens over large-scale areas (Tømmervik et al. 1998; Estrabou et al. 2011) Usually, in bio-monitoring, geophysical parameters are used to design the sampling and to find links between the distribution of the contaminations and these parameters over a given area (Loppi et al. 2004; Cuny et al. 2004; Brunialti and Frati 2007). Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11356-014-3990-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. J. P. G. Barre (*) : J. Frayret : H. Pinaly : O. F. X. Donard : D. Amouroux Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique Bio-Inorganique et Environnement (LCABIE), Institut des Sciences Analytiques et de Physico-Chimie pour l’Environnement et les Matériaux (IPREM), UMR 5254 CNRS, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Pau, France e-mail: julien.barre@univ-pau.fr G. Deletraz Laboratoire Société, Environnement et Territoire (SET), UMR 5603 CNRS, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Pau, France Environ Sci Pollut Res DOI 10.1007/s11356-014-3990-5