Objective
The project is to develop and test a method of biological monitoring of the maturity of biotopes by analyzing the abundance of species rich beetles (staphylinids). After studying the populations on a variety of reference sites all over the country, specific field sites, namely industrial waste dumps that are being restored, are examined.
A new short term technique to monitor the biological quality of restored land has been developed. The method is called soil faunal index (SFI) and was developed to maturity, telling management what further steps to make in order to obtain a stable, self sustainable biotope, which is of high value to the site managers because of the cost of supporting nonsustainable biotopes. The technique analyses the abundance of certain groups of indictor insects that inhabit biotopes in different development phases. It was shown that selfsustainability could be obtained, under good conditions and with appropriate management, within a period of only 3 years.
In the course of the project, easily transferable sampling equipment was developed, yielding similar efficiency to formerly used suction samplers, such as the D-Vac sampler.
The technique was checked out only at various industrial sites in Ireland but at a mine restoration site near La Coruna in North Spain as well. It was shown that the SFI technique provided highly meaningful and valuable recommendations to the site management there, indicating its fairly general applicability and transferability to other sites in other climates.
The method is a major step forward in biological monitoring and indexing the self sustainability potential of biotopes. It may mean the revival of taxonomy as an environmental monitoring science. The SFI technique is expected to assist the development of satisfactory site management liability and release from control issues.
At the UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BELFIELD in Dublin, Dr Jervis Good developed a new short-term technique to monitor the biological quality of restored land. The European Commission granted financial assistance to the project within its ACE 89 programme on the demonstration of clean technologies and monitoring and rehabilitation of contaminated sites. during the period of February, 1991, through February, 1994.
The method called SFI (Soil Faunal Index) was developed to maturity, telling management what further steps to make in order to obtain a stable, self-sustainable biotope - which is of high value to the site managers because of the cost of supporting non-sustainable biotopes. The technique analyzes the abundance of certain groups of indicator insects that inhabit biotopes in different development phases. It could be shown that self-sustainability could be obtained, under good conditions and with appropriate management, within a period of only three years.
In the course of the project, easily transferable sampling equipment was developed by Dr Good, yielding similar efficiency to former used suction samplers, such as the D-Vac sampler.
The technique was checked not only at various industrial sites in Ireland but at a mine restoration site near La Coruna in North Spain as well. It was shown that the SFI technique allowed to make highly meaningful and valuable recommendations to the site management there, indicating its fairly general applicability and transferability to other sites in other climates.
After all, the method is a major step forward in biological monitoring and indexing the self-sustainability potential of biotopes. It may mean the revival of taxonomy as an environmental monitoring science. The SFI technique is expected to assist the development of satisfactory site management liability and release from control issues.
Topic(s)
Data not availableCall for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
DEM - Demonstration contractsCoordinator
4 Dublin
Ireland