Stomatal ozone flux and flux–response relationships were derived for winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grown under fully open-air ozone fumigation. A stomatal conductance (gₛₜₒ) model developed for wheat in Europe was re-parameterized. Compared to European model parameterizations, the main changes were that the VPD and radiation response functions were made less and more restrictive, respectively, and that the temperature function was omitted. The re-parameterized gₛₜₒ model performed well with an r² value of 0.76. The slope and intercept of the regression between observed and predicted gₛₜₒ were not significantly different from 1 to 0, respectively. An ozone uptake threshold of 12 nmol m⁻² s⁻¹ was judged most reasonable for the wheat flux–response relationship in subtropical China. Judging from both flux- and concentration-based relationships, the cultivars investigated seem to be more sensitive to ozone than European cultivars. The new flux–response relationship can be applied to ozone risk assessment in subtropical regions.

In 2009 and 2010, 720 serum samples were collected from non-occupationally exposed study participants at four Korean locations and monitored for the presence of 27 polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) congeners. The median concentrations of Σ₂₇PBDEs (the sum of 27 congeners) and Σ₃–₇PBDEs (the sum of tri- to hepta-BDE congeners) were 6.04 and 4.97 ng/g lipid, respectively. The most abundant congener detected in serum samples was BDE-153, followed by BDE-47 and BDE-99. The median value of Σ₃–₇PBDEs was similar to the median values observed in Asia and Europe, but much lower than that observed in North America. Some significant differences, based on geographic region and sex, were observed. We also observed a positive increase of BDE-153 with regard to age. In addition, we estimated the daily exposure to PBDEs from previously published reports of PBDE concentrations in food and dust, and determined the individual contributions of a variety of sources.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) constitute an important group of brominated flame retardants that have been massively produced and extensively used in numerous everyday products, providing longer escape times in case of fire and thus saving lives, as well as reducing the damage of property. In recent years, PBDEs have been recognized as significant pollutants of the indoor environment. This article provides a synthesis and critical evaluation of the state of the knowledge about the occurrence of PBDEs in the indoor environment (air and dust in homes, workplaces and cars) in different countries in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, as well as about the human exposure via indoor air inhalation and dust ingestion in comparison to outdoor air inhalation and dietary intake.

The paper presents an analysis of measured riverine concentrations of 16 common organic water contaminants. From observed concentrations we back-calculate emissions and chemical half lives through a simple inverse model. The analysis does not allow identifying a single half life/emission factor combination, but a set of combinations which are Pareto-optimal (or “non-dominated”). The approach is shown to provide a rational basis for the screening of chemicals in rivers: with reference to the 16 chemicals considered here, estimated emission factors and half lives are consistent with the ones reported in other studies. For more precise estimates, prior knowledge about either emission factors or half lives is necessary. For the considered chemicals, loads to European seas can be subsequently estimated with an uncertainty usually within a factor of 2. The approach can be proposed for the inventorying of catchment-specific chemical pollutant emissions required for European environmental policies.

Forests in Europe face significant changes in climate, which in interaction with air quality changes, may significantly affect forest productivity, stand composition and carbon sequestration in both vegetation and soils. Identified knowledge gaps and research needs include: (i) interaction between changes in air quality (trace gas concentrations), climate and other site factors on forest ecosystem response, (ii) significance of biotic processes in system response, (iii) tools for mechanistic and diagnostic understanding and upscaling, and (iv) the need for unifying modelling and empirical research for synthesis. This position paper highlights the above focuses, including the global dimension of air pollution as part of climate change and the need for knowledge transfer to enable reliable risk assessment. A new type of research site in forest ecosystems (“supersites”) will be conducive to addressing these gaps by enabling integration of experimentation and modelling within the soil-plant-atmosphere interface, as well as further model development.

Dinophysis acuminata and Dinophysis acuta produce lipophilic toxins that cause most shellfish harvesting closures in the Atlantic coastal waters of Europe. Dinophysis often exhibit patchy distributions and sampling with conventional methods may fail to detect them. A 6-month calibration study in 2006, plus an additional sampling in 2010 were carried out in Galicia to compare Dinophysis counts obtained from weekly high vertical resolution bottle samples with depth-integrated hose samples. Counts with these two methods were comparable at some depth-ranges, but hose maxima were over one order of magnitude lower under thin-layer scenarios. Estimates from hose samplers should be used with caution in programmes using a “Dinophysis index”, either to trigger shellfish sampling or to establish precautionary harvesting closures. In general, hose samplers provide reliable information on the occurrence of Dinophysis except under extreme site-specific hydrodynamic conditions. This study adds new information about the heterogeneous, specific vertical distributions of two Dinophysis spp.

Marine plastic debris is a global issue, which highlights the need for internationally standardized methods of monitoring plastic pollution. The stomach contents of beached northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) have proven a cost-effective biomonitor in Europe. However, recent information on northern fulmar plastic ingestion is lacking in the North Pacific. We quantified the stomach contents of 67 fulmars from beaches in the eastern North Pacific in 2009–2010 and found that 92.5% of fulmars had ingested an average of 36.8 pieces, or 0.385g of plastic. Plastic ingestion in these fulmars is among the highest recorded globally. Compared to earlier studies in the North Pacific, our findings indicate an increase in plastic ingestion over the past 40years. This study substantiates the use of northern fulmar as biomonitors of plastic pollution in the North Pacific and suggests that the high levels of plastic pollution in this region warrant further monitoring.

The EUNIS (European Union Nature Information System) habitat classification system aims to provide a common European reference set of habitat types within a hierarchical classification, and to cover all terrestrial, freshwater and marine habitats of Europe. The classification facilitates reporting of habitat data in a comparable manner, for use in nature conservation (e.g. inventories, monitoring and assessments), habitat mapping and environmental management. For the marine environment the importance of a univocal habitat classification system is confirmed by the fact that many European initiatives, aimed at marine mapping, assessment and reporting, are increasingly using EUNIS habitat categories and respective codes. For this reason substantial efforts have been made to include information on marine benthic habitats from different regions, aiming to provide a comprehensive geographical coverage of European seas. However, there still remain many concerns on its applicability as only a small fraction of Europe’s seas are fully mapped and increasing knowledge and application raise further issues to be resolved. This paper presents an overview of the main discussion and conclusions of a workshop, organised by the MeshAtlantic project, focusing upon the experience in using the EUNIS habitats classification across different countries and seas, together with case studies. The aims of the meeting were to: (i) bring together scientists with experience in the use of the EUNIS marine classification and representatives from the European Environment Agency (EEA); (ii) agree on enhancements to EUNIS that ensure an improved representation of the European marine habitats; and (iii) establish practices that make marine habitat maps produced by scientists more consistent with the needs of managers and decision-makers. During the workshop challenges for the future development of EUNIS were identified, which have been classified into five categories: (1) structure and hierarchy; (2) biology; (3) terminology; (4) mapping; and (5) future development. The workshop ended with a declaration from the attendees, with recommendations to the EEA and European Topic Centre on Biological Diversity, to take into account the outputs of the workshop, which identify weaknesses in the current classification and include proposals for its modification, and to devise a process to further develop the marine component of the EUNIS habitat classification.

Metals, as well as other air toxic pollutants, can be responsible for a range of human health effects via inhalation or ingestion. European normatives regulate lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and nickel ambient air levels in order to prevent potential damage to human health and ecosystems; annual target levels of 500, 6, 5 and 20 ng/m³ for Pb, As, Cd and Ni are set for these pollutants in directives 2008/50/CE and 2004/107/CE. Air quality models constitute a powerful tool to understand tropospheric dynamic and to assign concentration values to areas where no measurement is available. However, not many models include heavy metals in their code, and mainly results for Pb, Cd and Hg have been published. In this paper, we present preliminary results on modelling Pb, Cd, As, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cr and Se air background concentration in Europe using the CHIMERE model, at a 0.2° resolution and the evaluation of the model performance in order to see its capability to reproduce observed levels. This evaluation was performed by comparing simulated values with observations at the EMEP monitoring sites, as only values at background sites can be captured at the 0.2° model resolution. Important uncertainties mainly related to emissions should be solved in order to obtain an improvement of model performance; more recent annual totals, information on snap activities for each metal, higher spatial resolution and a better knowledge of the temporal emission behaviour is necessary to adequately model these air pollutants. Also a better treatment of these particles considering more realistic metal size distribution, more refined deposition processes or some chemical processes regarding Se could result in better model results. A larger number of stations and a better temporal coverage of observations are also important to carry out a better statistical analysis of model performance.

Chemical composition of soil solution provides information on the availability of nutrients and potentially toxic substances to plant roots and mycorrhizas. It is therefore used to monitor impacts of air pollutants on soils. In this study we examined two soil solution parameters, base cations/aluminium ratio (Bc/Altot ratio) and inorganic nitrogen concentration (N), in samples collected at 300 intensive monitoring plots of the International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests) from the early 1990s to 2006 in order to detect possible critical limit exceedances (CLimE). CLimE for Bc/Altot ratio indicating negative effects for tree growth were only rarely detected. Quite the contrary was observed in CLimE for inorganic N concentrations where the safety limits were frequently exceeded in parts of Europe. Especially noteworthy is the number of the plots where leaching of N from forest soils occurred over the studied period. With ongoing high atmospheric N input into forest soils, we expect critical limits to be exceeded in the future as well.