Normative, systemic and procedural aspects: a review of indicator-based sustainability assessments in agriculture

Methods for assessing the sustainability of agricultural systems do often not fully (i) take into account the multifunctionality of agriculture, (ii) include multidimensionality, (iii) utilize and implement the assessment knowledge and (iv) identify conflicting goals and trade-offs. This chapter reviews seven recently developed multidisciplinary indicator-based assessment methods with respect to their contribution to these shortcomings. All approaches include (1) normative aspects such as goal setting, (2) systemic aspects such as a specification of scale of analysis and (3) a reproducible structure of the approach. The approaches can be categorized into three typologies: first, top-down farm assessments, which focus on field or farm assessment; second, top-down regional assessments, which assess the on-farm and the regional effects; and third, bottom-up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches, which focus on a regional scale. Our analysis shows that the bottom-up, integrated participatory or transdisciplinary approaches seem to better overcome the four shortcomings mentioned above.

Analysis and modeling of active occupancy of the residential sector in Spain: an indicator of residential electricity consumption

The growing energy consumption in the residential sector represents about 30% of global demand. This calls for Demand Side Management solutions propelling change in behaviors of end consumers, with the aim to reduce overall consumption as well as shift it to periods in which demand is lower and where the cost of generating energy is lower. Demand Side Management solutions require detailed knowledge about the patterns of energy consumption. The profile of electricity demand in the residential sector is highly correlated with the time of active occupancy of the dwellings; therefore in this study the occupancy patterns in Spanish properties was determined using the 2009–2010 Time Use Survey (TUS), conducted by the National Statistical Institute of Spain. The survey identifies three peaks in active occupancy, which coincide with morning, noon and evening. This information has been used to input into a stochastic model which generates active occupancy profiles of dwellings, with the aim to simulate domestic electricity consumption. TUS data were also used to identify which appliance-related activities could be considered for Demand Side Management solutions during the three peaks of occupancy.

Tagged phosphine reagents to assist reaction work-up by phase-switched scavenging using a modular flow reactor

The use of three orthogonally tagged phosphine reagents to assist chemical work-up via phase-switch scavenging in conjunction with a modular flow reactor is described. These techniques (acidic, basic and Click chemistry) are used to prepare various amides and tri-substituted guanidines from in situ generated iminophosphoranes.

A flow reactor process for the synthesis of peptides utilizing immobilized reagents, scavengers and catch and release protocols

A general flow process for the multi-step assembly of peptides has been developed and this procedure has been used to successfully construct a series of Boc, Cbz and Fmoc N-protected dipeptides in excellent yields and purities, including an extension of the method to enable the preparation of a tripeptide derivative.

A niche-based framework to assess current monitoring of European forest birds and guide indicator species' selection

Concern that European forest biodiversity is depleted and declining has provoked widespread efforts to improve management practices. To gauge the success of these actions, appropriate monitoring of forest ecosystems is paramount. Multi-species indicators are frequently used to assess the state of biodiversity and its response to implemented management, but generally applicable and objective methodologies for species' selection are lacking. Here we use a niche-based approach, underpinned by coarse quantification of species' resource use, to objectively select species for inclusion in a pan-European forest bird indicator. We identify both the minimum number of species required to deliver full resource coverage and the most sensitive species' combination, and explore the trade-off between two key characteristics, sensitivity and redundancy, associated with indicators comprising different numbers of species. We compare our indicator to an existing forest bird indicator selected on the basis of expert opinion and show it is more representative of the wider community. We also present alternative indicators for regional and forest type specific monitoring and show that species' choice can have a significant impact on the indicator and consequent projections about the state of the biodiversity it represents. Furthermore, by comparing indicator sets drawn from currently monitored species and the full forest bird community, we identify gaps in the coverage of the current monitoring scheme. We believe that adopting this niche-based framework for species' selection supports the objective development of multi-species indicators and that it has good potential to be extended to a range of habitats and taxa.

Indicators to monitor protected area sustainability: the INNOVA indicator handbook

The Mediterranean is an important eco-region, however, it suffers from the lack of common procedures for the management and monitoring of its protected areas sustainability. The INNOVA project addresses this issue by developing a procedure namely PASEMP as well as tools which can assist Protected Areas Managers and responsible authorities to develop and implement a monitoring strategy for their areas. This handbook is proposed as a flexible tool, or a reference text which should be used in combination with the PASEMP guidelines to identify indicators, but also contains guidance on how to implement and report the monitoring strategy results.

The EU societal awareness of landscape indicator: a review of its meaning, utility and performance across different scales

There is increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes meet multiple societal needs and demands beyond provision of economic and environmental goods and services. Accordingly, there have been significant calls for the inclusion of societal, amenity and cultural values in agri-environmental landscape indicators to assist policy makers in monitoring the wider impacts of land-based policies. However, capturing the amenity and cultural values that rural agrarian areas provide, by use of such indicators, presents significant challenges. The EU social awareness of landscape indicator represents a new class of generalized social indicator using a top-down methodology to capture the social dimensions of landscape without reference to the specific structural and cultural characteristics of individual landscapes. This paper reviews this indicator in the context of existing agri-environmental indicators and their differing design concepts. Using a stakeholder consultation approach in five case study regions, the potential and limitations of the indicator are evaluated, with a particular focus on its perceived meaning, utility and performance in the context of different user groups and at different geographical scales. This analysis supplements previous EU-wide assessments, through regional scale assessment of the limitations and potentialities of the indicator and the need for further data collection. The evaluation finds that the perceived meaning of the indicator does not vary with scale, but in common with all mapped indicators, the usefulness of the indicator, to different user groups, does change with scale of presentation. This indicator is viewed as most useful when presented at the scale of governance at which end users operate. The relevance of the different sub-components of the indicator are also found to vary across regions.

Assessing the ability of rural agrarian areas to provide Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES): a Multi Scale Social Indicator Framework (MSIF)

Assessing the ways in which rural agrarian areas provide Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) is proving difficult to achieve. This research has developed an innovative methodological approach named as Multi Scale Indicator Framework (MSIF) for capturing the CES embedded into the rural agrarian areas. This framework reconciles a literature review with a trans-disciplinary participatory workshop. Both of these sources reveal that societal preferences diverge upon judgemental criteria which in turn relate to different visual concepts that can be drawn from analysing attributes, elements, features and characteristics of rural areas. We contend that it is now possible to list a group of possible multi scale indicators for stewardship, diversity and aesthetics. These results might also be of use for improving any existing European indicators frameworks by also including CES. This research carries major implications for policy at different levels of governance, as it makes possible to target and monitor policy instruments to the physical rural settings so that cultural dimensions are adequately considered. There is still work to be developed on regional specific values and thresholds for each criteria and its indicator set. In practical terms, by developing the conceptual design within a common framework as described in this paper, a considerable step forward towards the inclusion of the cultural dimension in European wide assessments can be made.

Hydrophilic sulfonated bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands are highly effective reagents for separating actinides(iii) from lanthanides(iii) via selective formation of aqueous actinide complexes

We report the first examples of hydrophilic 6,6′-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-2,2′-bipyridine (BTBP) and 2,9-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-1,10-phenanthroline (BTPhen) ligands, and their applications as actinide(III) selective aqueous complexing agents. The combination of a hydrophobic diamide ligand in the organic phase and a hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligand in the aqueous phase is able to separate Am(III) from Eu(III) by selective Am(III) complex formation across a range of nitric acid concentrations with very high selectivities, and without the use of buffers. In contrast, disulfonated bis-triazine ligands are unable to separate Am(III) from Eu(III) in this system. The greater ability of the tetrasulfonated ligands to retain Am(III) selectively in the aqueous phase than the corresponding disulfonated ligands appears to be due to the higher aqueous solubilities of the complexes of the tetrasulfonated ligands with Am(III). The selectivities for Am(III) complexation observed with hydrophilic tetrasulfonated bis-triazine ligands are in many cases far higher than those found with the polyaminocarboxylate ligands previously used as actinide-selective complexing agents, and are comparable to those found with the parent hydrophobic bis-triazine ligands. Thus we demonstrate a feasible alternative method to separate actinides from lanthanides than the widely studied approach of selective actinide extraction with hydrophobic bis-1,2,4-triazine ligands such as CyMe4-BTBP and CyMe4-BTPhen.