Children are more sensitive to pollutants than adults and yet they spend large amounts of time in school environments where they are exposed to unknown levels of indoor pollutants. This study investigated the concentrations of the most abundant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in eight naturally ventilated school buildings in Italy. The schools were chosen to include areas with different urbanization and traffic density characteristics in order to gather a more diverse picture of exposure risks in the different areas of the city. VOCs were sampled for one week in the presence/absence of pupils using diffusive samplers suitable for thermal desorption inside three classrooms at each school. The samples were then analyzed with thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS). In addition, outdoor measurements were carried out in the yard at each school. VOC identification and quantification, and indoor/outdoor concentration plots were used to identify pollutant sources. While some classrooms were found to have very low VOC levels, others had a significant indoor contribution or a prevalent outdoor contribution. High concentrations of terpenes were found in all monitored classrooms: a-pinene and limonene were in the range of 6.55–34.18 µg/m3 and 11.11–25.42 µg/m3 respectively. Outdoor concentrations were lower than indoors for each monitored school. Indicators based on health risk assessment for chronic health effects associated with VOCs (either carcinogenic or non-carcinogenic) were proposed to rank sites according to their hazard level.

The paper focuses on the disparity of individual European Union countries. Inequality indicators in the evaluation of the population living in EU countries have a significant impact on the comprehensive assessment of regions. Factor analyses were used for a comprehensive evaluation of the indicators. The article used two different approaches to determine the order of the Member States with an emphasis on economic and environmental data. In the first case, authors used procedure for establishing a mathematical model using linear combination of input variables and the factorial loads for the variable. This variable explains the most variance of original variables. In the second procedure the authors used the value of the number of the newly created variables and in turn reflected the values of all four newly created variables. The most prominent improvement was achieved by Malta. It has been evaluated by both the methods (method A: score 6-1 and the method B: score 21-10). Both methods agree on Bulgaria being on the last place ranking in both years of observation (method A: 27-27, method B: 27-27). Authors applied an index analysis for the changes of the number of persons employed in agriculture sector. Authors used statistical software STATISTICA 9.2.

Efforts to define and quantify soil quality are not new, but establishing consensus about a set of standardized indicators remains difficult. Also, the view of land managers is usually not taken into account when evaluating various sets of indicators. Our objective was to compare, in functional terms, soil quality assessments based on 29 indicators, a subset with 8 of those indicators, and 4 indicators selected independently by farmers, based on their perceptions of soil quality. The assessments were made for three different rice management systems in Camaquã, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, on soils of four soil textural classes based on clay content (<200, 200–400, 400–600, or >600gkg−1). The effects of land management practices on soil functions (water infiltration, storage and supply; nutrient storage, supply and cycling; and sustained biological activity) were evaluated. Soil quality was best assessed using the entire set of 29 indicators, but use of smaller indicator sets showed the same trends among management systems, textural classes, and soil functions, thus providing meaningful information on soil quality for land managers.

Successful implementation of Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM) requires practical methods of translating information on system status into management actions. Threshold values in ecosystem indicators have been demonstrated to provide insight for characterizing change points in marine ecosystems and suggested as reference points for EBFM. We used a guild based multispecies simulation model of the Georges Bank finfish community to quantify tradeoffs and changes among values for proposed ecological indicators given alternative fishing scenarios, and tested the performance of indicator-based approaches for setting system ceilings on annual catches.Values for ecosystem indicators were sensitive to the exploitation rates on guilds, with total biomass of the community being most sensitive to groundfish exploitation rate. Setting ceilings on system-wide annual catches was successful in constraining values for indicators and revealed levels of system catch associated with indicator change. Community composition indicators showed catch thresholds lower than provided by the total biomass indicator. Ceilings based on community composition indicators more frequently resulted in higher yields and fewer species being overfished than when ceilings were set using total biomass or when no ceiling was in place.Simulations demonstrated that threshold values in ecosystem indicators could be used to determine reference points in an EBFM context. The broad ranges for threshold values obtained demonstrates the sensitivity of such methods to exploitation history, underscoring the need to both incorporate expert knowledge and relate reference point determination to management objectives.

The Welfare Quality (WQ) protocols are increasingly used for assessing welfare of farm animals. These protocols are time consuming (about one day per farm) and, therefore, costly. Our aim was to assess the scope for reduction of on-farm assessment time of the WQ protocol for dairy cattle. Seven trained observers quantified animal-based indicators of the WQ protocol in 181 loose-housed and 13 tied Dutch dairy herds (herd size from 10 to 211 cows). Four assessment methods were used: avoidance distance at the feeding rack (ADF, 44 min); qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA, 25 min); behavioural observations (BO, 150 min); and clinical observations (CO, 132 min). To simulate reduction of on-farm assessment time, a set of WQ indicators belonging to one assessment method was omitted from the protocol. Observed values of omitted indicators were replaced by predictions based on WQ indicators of the remaining three assessment methods, resources checklist, and interview, thus mimicking the performance of the full WQ protocol. Agreement between predicted and observed values of WQ indicators, however, was low for ADF, moderate for QBA, slight to moderate for BO, and poor to moderate for CO. It was concluded that replacing animal-based WQ indicators by predictions based on remaining WQ indicators shows little scope for reduction of onfarm assessment time of the Welfare Quality protocol for dairy cattle. Other ways to reduce on-farm assessment time of the WQ protocol for dairy cattle, such as the use of additional data or automated monitoring systems, should be investigated.

Intensive livestock farming has raised issues about environmental impacts and food security during the past 20 years. As a consequence, there is a strong social demand for sustainable livestock systems. Sustainable livestock systems should indeed be environmentally friendly, economically viable for farmers, and socially acceptable, notably for animal welfare. For that goal, many sustainability indicators and methods have been developed at the farm level. The main challenge is using a transparent selection process to avoid assessment subjectivity. Here, we review typologies of sustainability indicators. We set guidelines for selecting indicators in a data-driven context, by reviewing selection criteria and discussing methodological issues. A case study is presented. The selected set of indicators mainly includes (1) environmental indicators focusing on farmer practices; (2) quantitative economic indicators; and (3) quantitative social indicators with a low degree of aggregation. The selection of indicators should consider (1) contextualization to determine purpose, scales, and stakeholders involved in the assessment; (2) the comparison of indicators based on various criteria, mainly data availability; and (3) the selection of a minimal, consistent, and sufficient set of indicators. Finally, we discuss the following issues: topics for which no indicators are measurable from available data should explicitly be mentioned in the results. A combination of means-based indicators could be used to assess a theme, but redundancy must be avoided. The unit used to express indicators influences the results and has therefore to be taken into account during interpretation. To compare farms from indicators, the influence of the structure on indicator values has to be carefully studied.

In many countries, there is an increasing interest to assure the welfare of production animals. On-farm assessment of dairy cattle welfare, however, is time-consuming and, therefore, expensive. Besides this, effects of housing and management interventions that are aimed at improving welfare can be conflicting for different indicators of dairy cattle welfare. The research described in this thesis aimed to contribute to assurance of dairy cattle welfare by evaluating strategies to improve time-efficiency of welfare assessment and by identifying housing and management interventions for welfare improvement. Results presented are based on an observational study among 194 selected Dutch dairy herds. From these herds, data relating to housing, management, and indicators of the Welfare Quality (WQ) protocol for dairy cattle was collected on-farm, and routine herd data (RHD), relating to demography, management, milk production, milk composition, and fertility, was extracted from several national databases. Because in many countries RHD are regularly collected from dairy farms, it was hypothesized that RHD could be used to identify herds with potentially poor animal welfare and, therefore, reduce the number of on-farm assessments that are needed to identify these herds. Results of the literature review showed that variables of RHD have been associated with almost half of the welfare indicators in the WQ protocol for dairy cattle. When RHD and welfare data collected in the observational study were used to evaluate the value of RHD for predicting dairy cattle welfare at the herd level, predictions based on RHD for welfare indicators varied from less to highly accurate. For most welfare indicators, therefore, RHD can serve as a pre-screening test for detecting herds with poor welfare and reduce the number of on-farm assessments. In order to decide whether a herd should be visited following a pre-screening, however, value judgments about the overall welfare of herds need to be made. This requires combining welfare indicators in an overall score that reflects the multidimensional nature of welfare and the relative importance of indicators. The relative importance of indicators was evaluated for welfare classification of our study herds based on the WQ multicriteria evaluation model. Results showed that a limited number of indicators had a strong influence on classification of herds, and classification was not very sensitive to indicators of good health, such as prevalence of severely lame cows. As a different strategy for improving time-efficiency of welfare assessment, reduction of the time per on-farm assessment of the WQ protocol for dairy cattle was explored. Reduction of on-farm assessment time was simulated by omitting welfare indicators from the WQ protocol, and replacing observed values of omitted indicators by predictions based on remaining welfare indicators in the protocol. Because results showed that agreement between predicted and observed values of indicators was poor to moderate, it was concluded that this strategy has little potential to reduce on-farm assessment time. To contribute to knowledge of housing and management interventions that may lead to improvement of dairy cattle welfare, housing and management factors associated with various indicators in the WQ protocol were identified and compared. Surface of the lying area and pasturing in summer were commonly associated with the prevalence of lameness, lesions or swellings, and dirty hindquarters, but no common risk factors were identified for the average frequency of displacements and other welfare indictors. In conclusion, the present work shows that routine herd data can be used to improve time-efficiency of welfare assessment, whereas replacing welfare indicators by predictions based on other welfare indicators cannot. The WQ multicriteria evaluation model for classification of dairy cattle welfare has limitations in its current form. A softer surface of the lying area and pasturing in summer can enhance simultaneous improvement of multiple welfare indicators.

This article aims to map out the level of social performance measurement of Czech companies, i.e. what social performance indicators companies monitor and what information they provide to their stakeholders and to construct alternative corporate social performance indicators. Based on an analysis of 24 corporate voluntary reports and results of an empirical research performed among 79 large companies operating in the manufacturing industry, it was found that companies partially monitor their social performance, but from the perspective of international standards (e.g. Global Reporting Initiative, International Federation of Accountants) it is still insufficient. Czech companies usually provide only absolute numbers which disguise real trends and do not allow year on year comparison or comparison with other companies. Czech companies should provide a comprehensive picture of their overall performance, they should not focus only on financial indicators based on accounting data, since it is known that the performance measurement based only on financial and economic performance does not lead to long-term success and sustainability of organizations. Companies should monitor more their impact on society within which they operate. Proposed corporate social performance indicators in a measurable and thus manageable way express social issues.

The aim of this study was to establish threshold TGR and MDS values which could be used in regulated deficit irrigation in future work. Three irrigation treatments were performed during three seasons in a 37 year-old table olive orchard in Seville (Spain). Control treatment was irrigated with 125% of the crop evapotranspiration. Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) treatments were performed according to the phenological stage of the trees and different water stress levels. RDI trees were irrigated only when the threshold values of water stress level was reached. Water stress conditions were applied during the massive pit hardening period (phase II, RDI-2) or during this period and the shoot-flowering period (phase I, RDI-12). The water stress level was performed with the trunk growth rate (TGR) during phase I and recovery and maximum daily shrinkage signal (MDS signal) during phase II. Both parameters were calculated as relative values of the Control trees. TGR threshold values varied from equal to Control (RDI-2) or 0.25μm day−1 less than Control (RDI-12) during phase I. MDS signal (ratio between MDS in RDI vs MDS Control) threshold values varied from 0.5 (RDI-12) to 0.75 (RDI-2). In the recovery period, trees were irrigated when TGR values were lower than Control. This scheduled changed the amount of applied water between high and low fruit load seasons. The total amount of applied water in RDI trees oscillated from 38 to 160mm, depending on the season and the treatment. The yield was not significantly different between Control and deficit treatments. Fruit volume and number of fruits was affected for the irrigation. Limitations and management of TDF in irrigation scheduling is discussed.

The aim of this study was to establish threshold TGR and MDS values which could be used in regulated deficit irrigation in future work. Three irrigation treatments were performed during three seasons in a 37 year-old table olive orchard in Seville (Spain). Control treatment was irrigated with 125% of the crop evapotranspiration. Regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) treatments were performed according to the phenological stage of the trees and different water stress levels. RDI trees were irrigated only when the threshold values of water stress level was reached. Water stress conditions were applied during the massive pit hardening period (phase II, RDI-2) or during this period and the shoot-flowering period (phase I, RDI-12). The water stress level was performed with the trunk growth rate (TGR) during phase I and recovery and maximum daily shrinkage signal (MDS signal) during phase II. Both parameters were calculated as relative values of the Control trees. TGR threshold values varied from equal to Control (RDI-2) or 0.25μm day-1 less than Control (RDI-12) during phase I. MDS signal (ratio between MDS in RDI vs MDS Control) threshold values varied from 0.5 (RDI-12) to 0.75 (RDI-2). In the recovery period, trees were irrigated when TGR values were lower than Control. This scheduled changed the amount of applied water between high and low fruit load seasons. The total amount of applied water in RDI trees oscillated from 38 to 160mm, depending on the season and the treatment. The yield was not significantly different between Control and deficit treatments. Fruit volume and number of fruits was affected for the irrigation. Limitations and management of TDF in irrigation scheduling is discussed. | This research was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) (AGL2007-66279-C03-02/AGR and AGL2010-19201-CO4-03). The stay of D. Morales was supported by the AECID project D/030431/10. | Peer Reviewed