  Air pollution is known to be a major threat for human and ecosystem health. A
proper understanding of the factors generating pollution and of the behavior of
air pollution in time is crucial to support the development of effective
policies aiming at the reduction of pollutant concentration. This paper
considers the hourly time series of three pollutants, namely NO$_2$, O$_3$ and
PM$_{2.5}$, collected on sixteen measurement stations in Switzerland. The air
pollution patterns due to the location of measurement stations and their
relationship with anthropogenic activities, and specifically land use, are
studied using two approaches: Fisher-Shannon information plane and
complexity-invariant distance between time series. A clustering analysis is
used to recognize within the measurements of a same pollutant group of stations
behaving in a similar way. The results clearly demonstrate the relationship
between the air pollution probability densities and land use activities.
