All across Europe soils are contaminated with heavy metals, PCBs and organochlorine pesticides, like DDTs and HCHs. Many heavily polluted soils have been categorized as brownfields, indicating that their destination needs revision. The here presented Interreg IIIB-project faces the challenge to quantify the actual impact of pollution on resident wildlife. The aim of the present project is to provide accurate predictions of the risk of polluted soils to terrestrial organisms. The collected data will be used to develop a user-friendly tool that allows environmental policy and decision makers to redefine the destination of brownfields. Since contemporary risk assessments do not integrate spatial components, like foraging behaviour and micro-spatial variation in soil pollution, they most often lack ecological relevance.
Our part of the project comprises a field study on hedgehogs inhabiting study areas with varying levels of persistent pollutants around Antwerp. Individual hedgehogs will be tracked with GPS in order to investigate foraging behaviour and habitat use. Concentrations of pollutants will be quantified in soils, hedgehogs and their prey, in order to model the accumulation of persistent pollutants through the hedgehog’s food chain. Data on foraging behaviour and spatial soil contamination will be visualized using GIS. The spatial data will be integrated in the food chain model of the hedgehog in order to increase its ecological relevance. Finally, a Decision Support System (DSS) based on the model will be delivered. A demo version of the DSS is available for download at www.berisp.org.
Collaborating scientific partners include Central Science Laboratory (York, UK) (www.csl.gov.uk), Alterra (Wageningen, The Netherlands) (www.alterra.wur.nl). Information about end-users involved and other participants can be found at www.berisp.org.
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