Tag Archive for: soil invertebrates

Critical review and proposal for multigenerational testing in standard soil invertebrates

Standard laboratory tests to evaluate the effects of stressors (in most cases chemicals) on soil organisms offer a good compromise between feasibility and outcome, i.e. they should be reproducible and provide robust results. However, these tests may underestimate potential effects of prolonged exposures, particularly for persistent contaminants. In the last years, there was an increase […]

Evaluation of biodiversity via DNA-extraction from soil and organism samples taken at permanent soil monitoring sites (MetaSOL)

Germany lacks a nationwide and standardised survey of soil organisms, although a comprehensive infrastructure for such a survey is available with approx. 800 permanent soil monitoring sites (Bodendauer­beobachtungsflächen, BDF). Not all federal states conduct their own soil biology surveys on their permanent soil monitoring sites. The most important reason for this is probably the time-consuming […]

Development of a classification and assessment concept based on biodiversity of water and soil organisms regarding the effects of climate change and anthropogenic stressors

In July 2008, a new interdisciplinary research centre was founded in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) within the framework of the LOEWE Programme, a State Government of Hesse initiative for the development of scientific and economic excellence. The mission of the new centre (BiK-F) is to carry out internationally outstanding research on the interactions of organismic […]

Determination and analysis of the soil quality in the context of the implementation and further development of the National Strategy on Biodiversity

The aim of this project was the improvement of the preconditions for the protection of the habitat function of soil as described in § 2 of the German Federal Soil Protection Act (1998), in particular in two ways: first, suitable biological indicators (i.e. organism groups) for the assessment of soil quality had to be identified. […]

Examination of soil values with regard to protection of soil organisms and validation of soil assessment methods

On the basis of ecotoxicological tests performed with soil organisms, recommendations for precautionary values were given for 16 metals and 10 organics. In the case of three substances (antimony, beryllium, vanadium), the amount of data was not sufficient for such a derivation, while for arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, nickel, mercury, selenium, thallium, […]

GBIF Information system soil organisms: Coordination for the national and international assessment of the animal groups of Lumbricidae and Enchytraeidae

Edaphobase is a database project aiming to bring together information concerning taxonomy and ecology of important soil invertebrate taxa. Data will be extracted from literature, collections and unpublished material from research institutions with a focus on Germany and its neighboring countries. Linking such data on different soil organism groups from several trophic levels with climatic, […]

Soil biota and biogeochemistry in the Atlantic rainforest of Brazil – evaluation of diversity and soil function under anthropogenic influence (SOLOBIOMA)

One of the main threats of global biodiversity is the wide destruction of tropical rain forests. However, the portion of secondary forests will continue to increase. For the tropics, data on the recovery of faunal communities in the course of forest regeneration and knowledge on the suitability of secondary forests as refugial areas for old-growth […]

Development of a web-based pesticide risk assessment module for below-ground invertebrates

The overall objective of this project (WEBFRAM-5) was to investigate whether the application of probabilistic methods of uncertainty analysis can improve the risk assessment for effects of pesticides on below-ground invertebrates. The project addressed this objective in two ways: First, analysis of existing pesticide effects data was used to examine which methods of uncertainty analysis […]