Biomonitoring using birds of prey as sentinel species has been mooted as a way to evaluate the success of European Union directives that are designed to protect people and the environment across Europe from industrial contaminants and pesticides. No such pan-European evaluation currently exists. Coordination of such large scale monitoring would require harmonisation across multiple countries of the types of samples collected and analysed-matrices vary in the ease with which they can be collected and the information they provide. We report the first ever pan-European assessment of which raptor samples are collected across Europe and review their suitability for biomonitoring. Currently, some 182 monitoring programmes across 33 European countries collect a variety of raptor samples, and we discuss the relative merits of each for monitoring current priority and emerging compounds. Of the matrices collected, blood and liver are used most extensively for quantifying trends in recent and longer-term contaminant exposure, respectively. These matrices are potentially the most effective for pan-European biomonitoring but are not so widely and frequently collected as others. We found that failed eggs and feathers are the most widely collected samples. Because of this ubiquity, they may provide the best opportunities for widescale biomonitoring, although neither is suitable for all compounds. We advocate piloting pan-European monitoring of selected priority compounds using these matrices and developing read-across approaches to accommodate any effects that trophic pathway and species differences in accumulation may have on our ability to track environmental trends in contaminants.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10646-016-1636-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Biomonitoring using raptors as sentinels can provide early warning of the potential impacts of contaminants on humans and the environment and also a means of tracking the success of associated mitigation measures. Examples include detection of heavy metal-induced immune system impairment, PCB-induced altered reproductive impacts, and toxicity associated with lead in shot game. Authorisation of such releases and implementation of mitigation is now increasingly delivered through EU-wide directives but there is little established pan-European monitoring to quantify outcomes. We investigated the potential for EU-wide coordinated contaminant monitoring using raptors as sentinels. We did this using a questionnaire to ascertain the current scale of national activity across 44 European countries. According to this survey, there have been 52 different contaminant monitoring schemes with raptors over the last 50years. There were active schemes in 15 (predominantly western European) countries and 23 schemes have been running for >20years; most monitoring was conducted for >5years. Legacy persistent organic compounds (specifically organochlorine insecticides and PCBs), and metals/metalloids were monitored in most of the 15 countries. Fungicides, flame retardants and anticoagulant rodenticides were also relatively frequently monitored (each in at least 6 countries). Common buzzard (Buteo buteo), common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos), white-tailed sea eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus), tawny owl (Strix aluco) and barn owl (Tyto alba) were most commonly monitored (each in 6-10 countries). Feathers and eggs were most widely analysed although many schemes also analysed body tissues. Our study reveals an existing capability across multiple European countries for contaminant monitoring using raptors. However, coordination between existing schemes and expansion of monitoring into Eastern Europe is needed. This would enable assessment of the appropriateness of the EU-regulation of substances that are hazardous to humans and the environment, the effectiveness of EU level mitigation policies, and identify pan-European spatial and temporal trends in current and emerging contaminants of concern.

messy world: lessons learned when trying to make the ecosystem services concept operational.

Abstract:A study carried out in the Oldman River watershed in southern Alberta, Canada, to delineate potential surface water pollution sources revealed that the use of conventional raster-based digital elevation models (DEMs) and flow-direction algorithms resulted in the delineation of incorrect watershed boundaries. The inaccuracies resulted from the resolution of the available DEM, which is too coarse to represent the presence of anthropogenically modified terrain features, such as roads, ditches and canals, which can significantly alter overland flow paths. This observation prompted the development of the computer model RIDEM (Rural Infrastructure Digital Elevation Model). By incorporating ancillary data to refine anthropogenically modified overland flow paths into the grid-based watershed delineation process, the scale of runoff flow paths created with RIDEM is reduced below the scale defined by the representation of terrain with the DEM. RIDEM also resolves the inability of grid-based flow-direction algorithms to account for the split-flow patterns that occur in irrigated landscapes. The model outputs include a corrected flow-direction matrix, gross watershed boundaries, and road-induced dead drainages. The watershed areas derived with RIDEM differed by up to 49% from watersheds derived using a conventional DEM with a 20 m grid cell size. However, results of watershed boundaries could not be verified, because highly accurate watershed boundaries do not exist for our study area.

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