147Chapter 7
Interactive Effects Between Ozone
and Drought: Sorrow or Joy?
Sacha Bohler, Ann Cuypers and Jaco Vangronsveld
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
R. Mahalingam (ed.), Combined Stresses in Plants, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07899-1_7
S. Bohler () · A. Cuypers · J. Vangronsveld
Centre for Environmental Sciences, Environmental Biology, Hasselt University, Agoralaan
Building D, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Cuypers
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Vangronsveld
e-mail: [email protected]
7.1 Introduction
The industrial revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries marked the
beginning of industry and technology, as we know it today (Ashton 1997 ; Hull
1999 ). In the eighteenth century, the first commercially available steam engine was
one of many breakthroughs that improved transport and industrial processes. Unfor-
tunately, it was also the first step towards the extensive use of fossil fuels, initially
in the form of coal. The nineteenth century brought forward the invention of the
combustion engine using fuel derived from petrol. The increasing use of fossil fuels
also marked the dawn of anthropogenic pollution, which has increased ever since
and reached its preliminary peak in the twenty-first century.
In the 1970s, acid rain was the major concern of environmentalists (van Breemen
et al. 1984 ; Shortle and Bondietti 1992 ), and damaged vast areas of vegetation. Lat-
er, in the 1980s, depletion of the ozone layer had everybody worried (Solomon et al.
1986 ). Today, climate change is on the mind of the general population, including
policy makers and researchers. Even though still largely rejected by climate change
opponents, the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
presents ample proof that the earth’s average temperature is increasing, polar ice
caps are melting, ocean levels are rising and extreme weather conditions are becom-
ing more and more frequent (Solomon et al. 2007 ; Stocker et al. 2014 ). This is for a