Boden: Grundlage des Lebens = Le sol, base de la vie

Zum Internationalen Tag des Bodens am 5. Dezember 2022 engagierten sich Behörden, Naturschutzorganisationen, bäuerliche Kreise sowie Fachleute aus Wissenschaft und Raumplanung für die Erhaltung von Böden im Siedlungsgebiet.À l’occasion de la Journée mondiale des sols du 5 décembre 2022, des autorités, organisations de protection de la nature, milieux paysans, scientifiques et spécialistes de l’aménagement du territoire se sont engagés pour la préservation des sols dans le territoire urbanisé

Schwall-Sunk – Massnahmen : ein Modul der Vollzugshilfe Renaturierung der Gewässer

Das vorliegende Modul der Vollzugshilfe «Renaturierung der Gewässer» zeigt ein zweckmässiges Vorgehen auf, wie die Anforderungen der Gewässerschutzgesetzgebung an Sanierungsmassnahmen im Bereich Schwall-Sunk erfüllt werden können. Es beschreibt die einzelnen Planungsschritte nach Vorliegen der kantonalen strategischen Planung. Insbesondere behandelt es die Phase des Variantenstudiums und der Auswahl der Bestvariante. Einerseits werden Methoden und Indikatoren zur Beurteilung der Gewässerabschnitte, die durch Schwall-Sunk beeinträchtigt sind, dargelegt. Andererseits wird erklärt, wie das Ausmass der notwendigen Sanierungsmassnahme bestimmt und deren Wirkung kontrolliert werden kann

Using incomplete floristic monitoring data from habitat mapping programmes to detect species trends

Aim: The loss of biodiversity has raised serious concerns about the entailing losses of ecosystem services. Here, we explore the potential of repeated habitat mapping data to identify floristic changes over time. Using one German federal state as a case study, we assessed floristic changes between the 1980s and 2010s. These habitat data have great potential for analysis because of their high spatial coverage while also posing methodological challenges such as incomplete observation data. We developed a modelling approach that accounts for incomplete observations and explored the ability to detect temporal trends. Location: The Federal State of Schleswig‐Holstein (Germany) Methods: We compiled plant species lists from the earliest (1980s) and most recent (2010s) habitat mapping survey and aligned differing habitat definitions across mapping campaigns. A total of 5,503 mapped polygons, each with a list of species records, intersected the two surveys. We accounted for underrecorded species by assigning occurrence probabilities, based on species co‐occurrence information across all surveys, using Beals' index and tested the robustness of this approach by simulation experiments. For those species with significant increases and decreases in occurrence probability, we linked these trends to the species' functional characteristics. Results: We found a systematic loss of species that are moderately threatened. Species that indicate low nitrogen supply and high soil moisture declined, suggesting a shift towards a more eutrophic and drier landscape. Importantly, assessing specific plant traits associated with losses, we also detected a decrease in species with reddish and blueish flowers and species providing nectar, pointing to a decrease of insect‐pollinated taxa. Main conclusions: The identified changes raise concerns that plant biodiversity has fundamentally changed over the last three decades, with concomitant consequences for ecosystem services, especially pollination. Given the general lack of historical standardized data, our approach for trend analyses using incomplete observation data may be widely applicable to assess long‐term biodiversity change

Guidelines on compliance with the requirements of the drinking water ordinance in the testing and evaluation of radioactive substances in drinking water

On behalf of the then Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) carried out an extensive research programme from 2003 to 2008 to determine data on the content of natural radionuclides in drinking water and the resulting radiation exposure [BfS 2009]. These studies have shown that there is a significant natural occurrence of radioactivity in drinking water in certain regions of Germany, especially in central and southern Germany. Radiation exposure to radionuclides in drinking water is very low on average and health hazards can generally be ruled out. Nevertheless, the BfS testing programme showed that the fluctuation range of the concentrations of natural radionuclides in drinking water is very wide, and that in individual cases precautionary measures to reduce these concentrations would be appropriate