Environmental Assessment of Soil for Monitoring Volume I: Indicators & Criteria

The ENVASSO Project (Contract 022713) was funded 2006-8, under the European Commission 6th Framework Programme of Research, with the objective of defining and documenting a soil monitoring system appropriate for soil protection at continental level. The ENVASSO Consortium, comprising 37 partners drawn from 25 EU Member States, reviewed soil indicators, identified existing soil inventories and monitoring programmes in the Member States, designed and programmed a database management system to capture, store and supply soil profile data, and drafted procedures and protocols appropriate for inclusion in a European soil monitoring network of sites that are geo-referenced and at which a qualified sampling process is or could be conducted. Volume I, one of six describing the results of the ENVASSO Project, identifies 290 potential indicators relating to 188 key issues for the following nine threats to soil: erosion, organic matter decline, contamination, sealing, compaction, loss of biodiversity, salinisation, landslides and desertification. Sixty candidate indicators that address 27 key issues, covering all these threats, were selected on the basis of their thematic relevance, policy relevance and data availability. Baseline and threshold values are presented and detailed Fact Sheets describe three priority indicators for each soil threat.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

The Austrian biodiversity monitoring “ÖBM Kulturlandschaft” and a unified biodiversity number for trend assessments

The Austrian biodiversity monitoring ÖBM-Kulturlandschaft has a focus on habitat and species diversity in Austrian cultural landscapes (including alpine pastures) and started in the year 2017. The stratified random selection of the sampling sites is based on the 1 km² grid of Statistics Austria. A minimum of 50% of agricultural area within the 1 km² was the limit for considering a grid cell; 100 nested sampling plots are arranged hierarchically (i) remote sensing based landscape survey: 3 x 3 km² - landscape plots, (ii) habitat mapping: 625 m x 625 m test areas; and (iii) per test area: 10 test circles for surveys of vascular plants, grasshoppers and butterflies. A rolling (staggered) survey is planned: in the first year of the survey, half of the 100 sampling plots have been covered, in the second survey year the remaining half of the sampling plots. The repetition of surveys should take place every three to five years. Remote sensing data will be applied within the framework of ÖBM-Kulturlandschaft at three different levels: (i) phenological characterizations of the habitat types within the 625 m x 625 m sampling plots, (ii) detection of changes in ecosystem functions (e.g. NDVI) and ecosystem structure (e.g. land cover) around the sampling plots at 3x3 km² and (iii) nation-wide analysis of land cover change with the COPERNICUS products available for the entire EU. The recording of habitat types is based on the red lists published by the Environment Agency Austria. Regarding organismic groups, the survey methods are closely aligned with those applied in the monitoring project Biodiversity-Nature-Safety (BINATS; Pascher et al. 2011) that focusses on maize and oilseed rape cultivation areas and it is planned to merge data from BINATS and ÖBM-Kulturlandschaft to provide overall results for the Austrian cultural landscapes. Vascular plants, grasshoppers and butterflies were chosen mainly for being optimal surrogates for overall biodiversity, suppliers of ecosystem services, and/or due to practical advantages in surveying. Preliminary results from 2017 are that 69 species of grasshoppers (49% of Austrian species; n = 48 test areas) and 103 species of butterflies (48%, n=49) were detected. Average species richness was 10.6±4.6 for grasshoppers and 10.5±4.7 for butterflies per test area, and 3.9±2.9 for grasshoppers and 2.8±2.2 for butterflies per test circles. A novel method for biodiversity accounting will be used to summarise the population change results of all species obtained during monitoring. With this method, measured population change results are weighted by the species’ Red List category at the national and international scale and its dependence on the monitoring area (determined by habitat requirements and total range). References: K Pascher et al (2011) Setup, efforts and practical experiences of a monitoring program for genetically modified plants - an Austrian case study for oilseed rape and maize. Env Sci Eur 23:12peerReviewe

PEALD of SiO₂ and Al₂O₃ Thin Films on Polypropylene: Investigations of the Film Growth at the Interface, Stress, and Gas Barrier Properties of Dyads

A study on the plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of amorphous inorganic oxides SiO₂ and Al₂O₃ on polypropylene (PP) was carried out with respect to growth taking place at the interface of the polymer substrate and the thin film employing in situ quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM) experiments. A model layer of spin-coated PP (scPP) was deposited on QCM crystals prior to depositions to allow a transfer of findings from QCM studies to industrially applied PP foil. The influence of precursor choice (trimethylaluminum (TMA) vs [3-(dimethylamino)­propyl]-dimethyl aluminum (DMAD)) and of plasma pretreatment on the monitored QCM response was investigated. Furthermore, dyads of SiO₂/Al₂O₃, using different Al precursors for the Al₂O₃ thin-film deposition, were investigated regarding their barrier performance. Although the growth of SiO₂ and Al₂O₃ from TMA on scPP is significantly hindered if no oxygen plasma pretreatment is applied to the scPP prior to depositions, the DMAD process was found to yield comparable Al₂O₃ growth directly on scPP similar to that found on a bare QCM crystal. From this, the interface formed between the Al₂O₃ and the PP substrate is suggested to be different for the two precursors TMA and DMAD due to different growth modes. Furthermore, the residual stress of the thin films influences the barrier properties of SiO₂/Al₂O₃ dyads. Dyads composed of 5 nm Al₂O₃ (DMAD) + 5 nm SiO₂ exhibit an oxygen transmission rate (OTR) of 57.4 cm³ m^–2 day^–1, which correlates with a barrier improvement factor of 24 against 5 when Al₂O₃ from TMA is applied