Evaluation of BioSoil Demonstration Project - Preliminary Data Analysis

The BioSoil demonstration Project was initiated under the Forest Focus-Scheme (Regulation (EC) Nr. 2152/2003) concerning the monitoring of forests and environmental interactions in the Community, and aimed to broaden the scope of previous forest monitoring activities (on atmospheric pollution and forest fires) to the fields of soil characteristics and biodiversity indicators. The preliminary data analysis concentrated on the evaluation of a selected number of parameters of the data submitted by NFCs and sampling procedures. For soil the parameters needed to establish soil organic carbon densities were analysed. The spatial consistency of data reported between NFCs was found to vary significantly between sources also for assumed constant parameters (volume of coarse fragments). The temporal stability and changes in variable parameters were assessed using data from the previous soil condition survey on Level I sites. A particular problem in sampling and reporting data was the separation of the organic layer from the soil material, which was approached differently by the NFCs. No clear trend in the development of soil organic carbon over the previous survey was found. The analysis of data on biodiversity concentrated on the consistency and completeness of the parameters reported. Plot characteristics were mapped and species diversity was established based on commonly used indices expressing the richness and distribution of species present on a site. Relationships between forest type and species diversity were explored. Regional differences in identifying and reporting species between sites became evident during the analysis. The evaluation of both modules concluded that the manuals detailing sampling and analysis of the data collected need to be up-dated with a clear and unambiguous description of procedures to follow and inconsistencies removed.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Evaluation of BioSoil Demonstration Project - Soil Data Analysis

The BioSoil demonstration Project was initiated under the Forest Focus-Scheme (Regulation (EC) Nr. 2152/2003) concerning the monitoring of forests and environmental interactions in the Community, and aimed to broaden the scope of previous forest monitoring activities (on atmospheric pollution and forest fires) to the fields of soil characteristics and biodiversity indicators. The evaluation of the project concentrated on analysing a selected number of parameters submitted by NFCs for estimating the distribution and changes in soil organic carbon and the performance of the WRB classification. The spatial consistency of data reported between NFCs was found to vary significantly between sources, such as the presence of an organic layer on the over soil. The temporal stability and changes in variable parameters were assessed using data from the previous soil condition survey on Forest Focus / ICP Forests Level I sites. No clear general trend in the development of soil organic carbon over the previous survey was found, but some local changes. The results provided by the Central Laboratory suggest that some methodological differences in assessing the organic carbon content of the organic layers exist between the FSCC / ICP Forests and the BioSoil survey. Those differences limit the scope of a change analysis. A particular problem in sampling and reporting data was the separation of the organic layer from the soil material, which was approached differently by the NFCs. The evaluation also concluded that the specifications provided in the Manual detailing sampling and analysis of the data collected need to be up-dated with a clear and unambiguous description of procedures to follow and making the reporting on key soil parameters a mandatory task.JRC.DDG.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Harmonized classification scheme of fire causes in the EU adopted for the European Fire Database of EFFIS

The information on the causes of forest fires is of paramount importance to support the environmental and civil protection policies and design appropriate prevention measure. At the European level a simple common scheme with 4 fire causes classes (deliberate, accident/negligence, natural and unknown) has been used to record information on fire causes since 1992. European countries use national schemes which in most cases are much more detailed than the simple 4 common classes, but they are not harmonized and detailed cross country comparisons are difficult. The need for a new EU scheme, more detailed than the 4 basic categories and harmonized across European countries, to be recorded in the Fire Database of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), has been identified to improve the information level and the common knowledge on the origin of forest fires in Europe. The new scheme has been conceived to be applicable with limited changes to the previous country settings, preserving as much as possible the historical data series of each country and exploiting at the same time as much as possible the level of detail of the information available. This report provides a detailed description of the new scheme, its main features with precise definition of each cause class and the mapping of the historical national systems to the new harmonized system. The scheme is hierarchical and is made of 29 fire cause classes, 8 groups and 6 categories. The explicit statement on the level of certainty in the attribution of the cause to a fire event has been introduced as a key element in the new scheme. This harmonized fire cause classification scheme is expected to be adopted by the countries participating to the EFFIS network in the coming years, and therefore be recorded in the European Fire Database, with a significant added value for the knowledge about the origin of forest fires in Europe.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

towards integrating risk dimensions

Costa, H., de Rigo, D., Libertà, G., Houston Durrant, T., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., 2020. European wildfire danger and vulnerability in a changing climate: towards integrating risk dimensions. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 59 pp. ISBN:978-92-76-16898-0 , https://doi.org/10.2760/46951This research focuses on European wildfire danger and vulnerability under a changing climate, to support the integration of some main climate-related components of wildfire risk. A detailed assessment is proposed on the varying frequency of fire danger classes (from the relatively safer to the extreme danger conditions) under changing climate. On a given area, the co-occurrence of an increasing number of high-danger days, and the presence of people potentially exposed to wildfires, and living within the more vulnerable interface between settlements and wildland, indicates an increasing fire risk. Focusing on the population potentially exposed to wildfires in Europe, the interface between urban areas and wildland (WUI) is here identified as an indicator of where the people are more vulnerable, both due to the easier ignition of areas where people can have an easier access to wildland, and due to a passive consequence of the increased risk. Once a given fire is ignited close to the WUI, neighbour locations are also threatened. In addition, summary indices of potential vegetation vulnerability are introduced to account not only for single species vulnerability, but rather for the combined multifaceted impacts on vegetation structure and composition following the definition of ecological domains by FAO and estimating their potential shift under different climate-change scenarios. An integrated assessment of the findings supports a recommendation to focus on the Mediterranean areas of Europe characterised by higher potential vegetation and population vulnerability, and higher potential fire danger. In addition, attention may be necessary to specific mountain areas (even outside the Mediterranean) especially on lower elevation areas where forests are dominant and more vulnerable to a rapidly changing ecology, and land abandonment may worsen the vegetation fuel and the WUI interface for the remaining population.publishersversionpublishe

The helminth product, ES-62, protects against airway inflammation by resetting the Th cell phenotype

We previously demonstrated inhibition of ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic airway hyper-responsiveness in the mouse using ES-62, a phosphorylcholine-containing glycoprotein secreted by the filarial nematode, Acanthocheilonema viteae. This inhibition correlated with ES-62-induced mast cell desensitisation, although the degree to which this reflected direct targeting of mast cells remained unclear as suppression of the Th2 phenotype of the inflammatory response, as measured by eosinophilia and IL-4 levels in the lungs, was also observed. We now show that inhibition of the lung Th2 phenotype is reflected in ex vivo analyses of draining lymph node recall cultures and accompanied by a decrease in the serum levels of total and OVA-specific IgE. Moreover, ES-62 also suppresses the lung infiltration by neutrophils that is associated with severe asthma and is generally refractory to conventional anti-inflammatory therapies, including steroids. Protection against Th2-associated airway inflammation does not reflect induction of regulatory T cell (Treg) responses (there is no increased IL-10 or Foxp3 expression) but rather a switch in polarisation towards increased T-bet expression and IFNγ production. This ES-62-driven switch in the Th1/Th2 balance is accompanied by decreased IL-17 responses, a finding in line with reports that IFNγ and IL-17 are counter-regulatory. Consistent with ES-62 mediating its effects via IFNγ-mediated suppression of pathogenic Th2/Th17 responses, we found that neutralising anti-IFNγ antibodies blocked protection against airway inflammation in terms of pro-inflammatory cell infiltration, particularly by neutrophils and lung pathology. Collectively, these studies indicate that ES-62, or more likely small molecule analogues, could have therapeutic potential in asthma, in particular for those subtypes of patients (e.g. smokers, steroid-resistant) who are refractory to current treatments

Forest Fires in Europe 2008

This is the ninth -Forest Fires in Europe- report published by the European Commission. The report contains a summary of the 2008 fire season in Europe, with official statistics on number of fires and burned areas compiled by the contributing countries. In addition to country reports with a summary of the past fire season provided by the countries, the report Forest Fires in Europe informs about the latest developments in terms of forest fire prevention and initiatives of the European Commission to support forest fires fire protection activities in the European Union. Furthermore it provides the results of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) operating during the fire season, with special emphasis on the EFFIS Danger Forecast, providing daily maps of meteorological fire danger forecast of EU, and the EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment, performing the daily mapping and assessment of main land cover and Natura2000 areas affected by fires of at least 50 ha during the fire season.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

A methodological investigation of the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm: Methods of analyses, picture selection and data rejection criteria

The Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm provides a sensitive measure of a child's online word comprehension. To complement existing recommendations (Fernald, Zangl, Portillo, & Marchman, 2008), the present study evaluates the impact of experimental noise generated by two aspects of the visual stimuli on the robustness of familiar word recognition with and without mispronunciations: the presence of a central fixation point and the level of visual noise in the pictures (as measured by luminance saliency). Twenty-month-old infants were presented with a classic word recognition IPL procedure in 3 conditions: without a fixation stimulus (No Fixation - noisiest condition), with a fixation stimulus before trial onset (Fixation, intermediate), and with a fixation stimulus, a neutral background and equally salient images (Fixation Plus - least noisy). Data were systematically analyzed considering a range of data selection criteria and dependent variables (proportion of looking time towards the target, longest look, and time-course analysis). Critically, the expected pronunciation and naming interaction was only found in the Fixation Plus condition. We discuss the impact of data selection criteria and the dependent variable choice on the modulation of these effects across the different conditions

Influence of climatic variables on crown condition in pine forests of Northern Spain

Producción CientíficaThe aim of this study was to find relationships between crown condition and some climatic parameters to identify which are those having a main influence on crown condition, and how this influence is shown in the tree (crown transparency), and to contribute to the understanding of how these parameters will affect under future climate change scenarios

Basic criteria to assess wildfire risk at the pan-European level

This report present basic criteria that could be used for the estimation of wildfire risk at the pan-European level. The report has been elaborated in consultation with the national experts in the Expert Group on Forest Fires. The report represents a first attempt on establishing critical variable that may help in characterizing areas in the pan-European region on the basis of the susceptibility to suffer damages caused by wildfiresJRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen