New trends in Aerobiologia

From the beginning of this century most of the published papers in aerobiology have concerned above all the following fields: the presence of pollinic allergens in the atmosphere and not only pollen, long-distance transport models, modelling of the presence of pollen and spores in the air, the influence of air pollution and climate change on bioparticles, the phenology of allergenic plants, pollen released by alien species, phytopathology of crops, the productivity of forest plants, indoor monitoring for human health and cultural heritage protection. In many cases the problems linked to aerobiological monitoring have been handled and new monitoring techniques for counting and identifying particles and following their development have been put forward. What could be the challenges in the future for aerobiology? Perhaps three major directions of development can be foreseen: renovating theoretical aerobiology, expanding monitoring, and aerobiological information systems. In any case, aerobiology should be more proactive, in other words it should be able to facilitate and stimulate further research, therefore not only producing data used by other branches of learning. These goals could be obtained by means of more active systems, capable of providing information on the ecological dynamics of the species, and of integrating with phenological networks to improve the measurement rather than making estimates of the bioparticles dispersal. This idea could facilitate research in order to take advantage of most modern research techniques so as improve knowledge on the dynamics of bioparticles in the atmosphere, their dispersion and the effects of deposition.