Soil Fauna and Ecotoxicology
Research Unit SoFaR

Polluted sites and bioremediation

The SoFaR Unit provides environmental site assessments (ESA) including ecological monitoring, mapping and ecotoxicological testing (bioassays). These are all useful tools for ecological risk assessment of polluted sites. This assessment will help site managers in their decisions of how much to clean up and may substantially reduce clean-up costs. The SoFaR unit participates in relevant international networks on contaminated land issues.

The SoFaR unit has large experience with both heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants. We have a demonstration site contaminated with copper and in the "Centre for Biological Processes in Contaminated Soils and Sediments" (see website) the group studies effects of polyaromatic carbon compounds PAC. The SoFaR unit has also considerable experience with ecotoxicological characterisation of soils from sites contaminated with pesticides such as DDT.

Ecological monitoring of soil organisms are done at the population and community levels with the aim to identify levels of contamination hazardous for soil organisms. Plant cover data and soil microarthropod abundance and distribution are typically used as relevant monitoring end-point. The use of the classical Shannon-Wiener index and novel applications of multivariate statistics provides an identification of contaminant levels affecting populations and communities. Community analyses of field data have proved as sensitive as laboratory testing, and seem superior to single species field population data concerning detection of ecological effects of pollutants.