A first evaluation of multiple automatic pollen monitors run in parallel

A range of commercially available automatic pollen monitors were run in parallel and evaluated for the first time during the 2019 spring season; this includes the Droplet Measurement Technologies WIBS-NEO, Helmut-Hund BAA-500, the Plair Rapid-E, two Swisens Poleno, and two Yamatronics KH-3000 devices. The instruments were run from 19 April to 31 May 2019 and located in Payerne, Switzerland, representative of a semi-rural site on the Swiss plateau. The devices were validated against Hirst-type traps in terms of total pollen counts for daily and sub-daily averages. While the manual measurements cannot be considered a “gold standard” in terms of absolute values, they provide an established reference against which the automatic instruments can be evaluated. Overall, there was considerable spread between instruments compared to the manual observations. The devices showed better performance when daily averages were considered, with three of the seven showing non-significantly different values from the manual measurements. However, when six-hourly averages were considered, only one of the instruments was not significantly different from the Hirst trap average. The largest differences between instruments were evident at low pollen concentrations (< 20 pollen grains/m3), no matter the temporal resolution considered. This is in part, however, to be expected since it is at such low concentrations that the Hirst measurements are most uncertain. It is also important to note that in 2019 many of the instruments tested had only recently been developed. Differences may also have arisen due to their varying abilities to identify specific pollen taxa or because the classification algorithms applied were developed for different pollen taxa and not total pollen, the variable considered in this study.