Soil Themes > Biodiversity > Working Group
The JRC has created in middle 2008 a Biodiversity expert group to provide it with advice and assistance regarding its scientific and technical activities in support to EU soil policy making and research.
Main terms of reference
1. Objectives
- To fill the gaps in the knowledge of Soil Biodiversity Taxonomy, completing the inventory/ies of the existing soil organism.
- To realize a soil biodiversity database, hosting the information provided by the member states.
- To promote and participate in international initiatives and research projects regarding soil biodiversity investigation (inventories, monitoring, ecosystem functions).
- To evaluate the ongoing monitoring activities in the EU member states and in others countries, and to propose possible harmonization.
- To produce or contribute to the Commission, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the FAO and other international bodies, soil biodiversity reference reports, joint articles in scientific journals and conference papers, and possibly organizing specific sessions in major conferences.
- To establish initiatives for raising the awareness on soil biodiversity.
2. Membership and operation
- Membership will combine expertise and different views on soil biodiversity issues.
- Membership open to soil biodiversity experts.
- Initial membership will include a relatively small number of experts who participated to foundation of the group, but will be extensible to additional members.
- Membership will be compatible with that of other working groups.
JRC support to the group operation
In order to enables the working group to meet its objectives, the JRC will provide the following support:
- Financial support for travelling and lodging to group members participating in group meetings. These will be held at JRC's Ispra site or, alternatively, at a member's organization site or at an international conference venue.
- Develop and maintain a dedicated section on the group activities and reporting within the JRC soils website (http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu), with links to members organization websites and/or personal pages.
- Produce and distribute limited paper editions of the group reports.
- Create a mailing list for communication between group members.
- Search for possible additional financial support to the group operation from JRC and other Commission services.
Working group members
- Mulongoy (Jo) Kalemani, Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
- Sally Bunning, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
- Clemencia Licona Manzur, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
- Karl Ritz, Cranfield University (UK)
- Philippe Lemanceau, Université de Bourgogne (France)
- Daniel Cluzeau, Université de Rennes (France)
- Jorg Rombke, ECT Ökotoxikologie (Germany)
- Carlo Jacomini, APAT, Italian Agency for Environment Protection (Italy)
- Michiel Rutgers, RIVM (Netherlands)
- Karin Niensted, EFSA - European Food Safety Authority (EU)
- Antonio Bispo, Ademe - Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie (France).
- Gabriele Broll, Department of Geo- and Agroecology, University of Vechta (Germany).
- Paul Henning Krogh, National Environmental Research Institute, University of Aarhus (Denmark).
- José Paulo Sousa, Dep. Zoologia da Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
- Silvia Pieper, Federal Environment Agency, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Risk Assessment, Dessau, Germany
- Michael Petrakis, Research Director Institute for Environmental Research & Sustainable Development National Observatory of Athens,Greece
- Luca Marmo, DG ENV (EU)
- Luca Montanarella, DG JRC (EU)
- Ciro Gardi, DG JRC (EU)
- Panos Panagos, DG JRC (EU)
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