Purpose

The purpose of this experiment is to augment the use of lichens as indicators of sulfur dioxide levels by making the process more efficient as well as to obtain quantitative measurements of the amount of sulfur dioxide exposed to the environment by locating indicative lichen species. The project will also be used to acquire more results in a home environment with species unique to Central Florida and different indicative factors than tested in previous research comparable to this experiment. Ultimately, the project’s purpose is to write a more accurate, detailed procedure for using lichens to identify sulfur dioxide levels by giving actual values of abundance instead of recording presence of lichens in an area and only observing color and size.