Evaluación de la Capacidad Alergénica real del "Parque de Invierno" de la ciudad de Oviedo (Asturias, España)

Abstract

Urban green spaces are becoming increasingly important in the daily life of citizens, since, apart from being quiet spaces where you can relax, they have a great environmental value. However, in some cases they can cause possible health problems if certain allergenic flora is present in excess. The current work aims to evaluate, through the Allergenicity Index of Urban Green Areas (Iugza) devised by CARIÑANOS & al. (2014), the degree of environmental health of the "Parque de Invierno", which, with an area of almost 300,000 m2, represents one of the largest and most important green spaces in the city of Oviedo. The formula mainly encompasses parameters related to the emission of pollen by the woody plants present and their allergenic capacity, and can give values between 0 and 1, with 0.3 being the threshold value from which a green area would begin to have a moderate allergenic capacity. The park was divided into 16 plots, and a rigorous data collection was carried out, where a total of 2,187 trees and 143 shrubs, belonging to 100 different taxa, were identified, and characterized. The Iugza calculation was carried out for each plot separately, where the highest value obtained was Iugza= 0.11054, and in turn, the same calculation was made for the total extension of the park, obtaining a value of Iugza= 0.043858. In this way, it was possible to conclud that, of the green spaces analyzed to date, the Winter Park is one of the environmentally healthy urban parks.