Land take and food security: assessment of land take on the agricultural production in Europe

Soil is a multifunctional, non-renewable natural resource for Europe as clearly expressed in the European Union (EU) Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM (2006)231). Soil carries out multiple functions, including the support of food production. Urban development and its associated land take poses a major threat to soil and could have significant effects on agricultural production. This paper aims to evaluate the potential productivity losses in European agriculture due to land-take processes between 1990 and 2006. Agricultural land take was calculated using CORINE Land Cover maps of 1990, 2000 and 2006. For 21 of the 27 EU member states, agricultural land take was computed to be 752,973 ha for 1990–2000 and 436,095 ha for 2000–2006, representing 70.8% and 53.5%, respectively, of the total EU land take for these periods. The impact of this land take on the production capabilities of the agricultural sector for the period 1990–2006 for 19 of the 21 states was estimated to be equivalent to a loss of more than six million tonnes of wheat. The paper demonstrates that Europe's intense urbanisation has a direct impact on its capability to produce food.     

SoilTrEC: a global initiative on critical zone research and integration

Soil is a complex natural resource that is considered non-renewable in policy frameworks, and it plays a key role in maintaining a variety of ecosystem services (ES) and life-sustaining material cycles within the Earth's Critical Zone (CZ). However, currently, the ability of soil to deliver these services is being drastically reduced in many locations, and global loss of soil ecosystem services is estimated to increase each year as a result of many different threats, such as erosion and soil carbon loss. The European Union Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection alerts policy makers of the need to protect soil and proposes measures to mitigate soil degradation. In this context, the European Commission-funded research project on Soil Transformations in European Catchments (SoilTrEC) aims to quantify the processes that deliver soil ecosystem services in the Earth's Critical Zone and to quantify the impacts of environmental change on key soil functions. This is achieved by integrating the research results into decision-support tools and applying methods of economic valuation to soil ecosystem services. In this paper, we provide an overview of the SoilTrEC project, its organization, partnerships and implementation.     

GEOSTATISTICAL ESTIMATION OF HORIZONTAL HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY FOR THE KIRKWOOD‐COHANSEY AQUIFER1

ABSTRACT: The Kirkwood‐Cohansey aquifer has been identified as a critical source for meeting existing and expected water supply needs for southern New Jersey. Several contaminated sites exist in the region; their impact on the aquifer has to be evaluated using ground water flow and transport models. Ground water modeling depends on availability of measured hydrogeologic data (e.g., hydraulic conductivity, for parameterization of the modeling runs). However, field measurements of such critical data have inadequate spatial density, and their locations are often clustered. The goal of this study was to research, compile, and geocode existing data, then use geostatistics and advanced mapping methods to develop a map of horizontal hydraulic conductivity for the Kirkwood‐Cohansey aquifer. Spatial interpolation of horizontal hydraulic conductivity measurements was performed using the Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) Method implemented in the BMELib code library. This involved the integration of actual measurements with soft information on likely ranges of hydraulic conductivity at a given location to obtain estimate maps. The estimation error variance maps provide an insight into the uncertainty associated with the estimates, and indicate areas where more information on hydraulic conductivity is required.     

Spatial variation of volatile organic compounds in a "Hot Spot" for air pollution

The spatial variations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were characterized in the Village of Waterfront South neighborhood (WFS), a "hot spot" for air toxics in Camden, NJ. This was accomplished by conducting "spatial saturation sampling" for 11 VOCs using 3500 OVM passive samplers at 22 sites in WFS and 16 sites in Copewood/Davis Streets (CDS) neighborhood, an urban reference area located ～1000 m east of the WFS. Sampling durations were 24 and 48 h. For all 3 sampling campaigns (2 in summer and 1 in winter), the spatial variations and median concentrations of toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (TEX) were found significantly higher (p < 0.05) in WFS than in CDS, where the spatial distributions of these compounds were relatively uniform. The highest concentrations of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) (maximum of 159 μg m(-3)) were always found at one site close to a car scrapping facility in WFS during each sampling campaign. The spatial variation of benzene in WFS was found to be marginally higher (p = 0.057) than in CDS during one sampling campaign, but similar in the other two sampling periods. The results obtained from the analyses of correlation among all species and the proximity of sampling site to source indicated that local stationary sources in WFS have significant impact on MTBE and BTEX air pollution in WFS, and both mobile sources and some of the stationary sources in WFS contributed to the ambient levels of these species measured in CDS. The homogenous spatial distributions (%RSD < 24%) and low concentrations of chloroform (0.02-0.23 μg m(-3)) and carbon tetrachloride (0.45-0.51 μg m(-3)) indicated no significant local sources in the study areas. Further, results showed that the sampling at the fixed monitoring site may under- or over-estimate air pollutant levels in a "hot spot" area, suggesting that the "spatial saturation sampling" is necessary for conducting accurate assessment of air pollution and personal exposure in a community with a high density of sources.     

A Multiscale Approach for Assessing the Interactions of Environmental and Biological Systems in a Holistic Health Risk Assessment Framework

Advances in computing processing power and in availability of environmental and biological data have allowed the development and application of comprehensive modeling systems that utilize a holistic, integrated, approach for assessing the interactions of environmental and biological systems across multiple scales of spatiotemporal extent and biological organization. This approach allows mechanism-based environmental health risk assessments in a person-oriented framework, which accounts for simultaneous exposures to contaminants from multiple media, routes, and pathways. The conceptual basis and example applications of the Modeling ENvironment for TOtal Risk (MENTOR), and the DOse–Response Information ANalysis system (DORIAN) are presented.     

An evaluation of the role of risk-based decision-making in a former manufactured gas plant site remediation

Environmental remediation decisions are driven by the need to minimize human health and ecological risks posed by environmental releases. The Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund Sites enunciates the principles of exposure and risk assessment that are to be used for reaching remediation decisions for sites under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Experience with remediation management under CERCLA has led to recognition of some crucial infirmities in the processes for managing remediation: cleanup management policies are ad hoc in character, mandates and practices are strongly conservative, and contaminant risk management occurs in an artificially narrow context. The purpose of this case study is to show how a policy of risk-based decision-making was used to avoid customary pitfalls in site remediation. This case study describes the risk-based decision-making process in a remedial action program at a former manufactured gas plant site that successfully achieved timely and effective cleanup. The remediation process operated outside the confines of the CERCLA process under an administrative consent order between the utility and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. A residential use end state was negotiated as part of this agreement. The attendant uncertainties, complications, and unexpected contingencies were overcome by using the likely exposures associated with the desired end state to structure all of the remediation management decisions and by collecting site-specific information from the very outset to obtain a detailed and realistic characterization of human health risks that needed to be mitigated. The lessons from this case study are generalizable to more complicated remediation cases, when supported by correspondingly sophisticated technical approaches.