Date and time: 13th February 2025; 13:00 – 13:45 (CET) – Twentieth webinar: Implementing a long-term network to monitor the effects of air pollution on terrestrial ecosystems in Portugal
The CLEANFOREST webinar series is hosted by the COST Action’s Young Researchers community for all interested researchers and practitioners usually during the second and fourth week of every month. We are honored to announce that for the Twentieth event in the series, we will be joined by Maria Alexandra Oliveira from the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, WG1 co-leader and MC Member. A summary of her talk is given below.
Monitoring the effects of air pollution on European terrestrial ecosystems has been mostly focused on forests through the International Co-operative Programme (ICP) on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICPForests). The ICP was established in 1985 under the Air Convention (former CLRTAP), following discussions on strategies and policies to reduce air pollution, focused at the time on sulfur compounds. Nowadays, the European strategy to reduce effects of air pollution on ecosystems is highlighted by the National Emissions Reduction Commitments (NEC) Directive, which requires that Member States establish monitoring networks to assess the effects of sulfur, nitrogen, and ozone on ecosystems.
Selection of sites to be included in the national networks should be based on risk and cost-benefit strategy, through a set of criteria that consider spatial and ecosystem representativeness (percentage of land occupation), and inclusion of highly sensitive ecosystems. At the European scale, many countries are basing their networks on pre-existing ICP Forest sites. However, some countries, such as Portugal, lack active ICP Forest monitoring, and must establish new networks. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity to create a long-term monitoring network that maximizes the number of parameters to be measured and to establish clear dose-response relationships at both the individual and ecosystem scales. In Portugal, representative ecosystems include woodland and forests, grasslands, heathland and scrub, and croplands. Parameters in each monitoring site include air, soil, plant, and soil pore water chemistry, as well as biodiversity metrics. Site selection was based on a framework that overlaps existing air quality stations, representative ecosystems, Natura 2000 sites or other protection status, sensitive habitats, and public ownership.
The work to be presented in the scope of the CLEANFOREST webinar series, hosted by the COST Action’s Young Researchers community, will address the steps taken in the selection of 24 monitoring plots, highlighting limiting factors, strengths, and weaknesses of the new Portuguese long-term monitoring network built to assess the effect of air pollution on terrestrial ecosystems.
Deadline: please sign up via the registration link above BEFORE the webinar.
Contact:
- Presenter: Maria Alexandra Oliveira (maoliveira@fc.ul.pt)
- Webinar co-convenor: Klaudia Ziemblinska (klaudiaziem@wp.pl)
- Webinar convenor: Andrei Popa (popa.andrei.dorna@gmail.com)
