Towards the adoption of an international standard for biomonitoring with lichens—Consistency of assessment performed by experts from six European countries

Cristofolini, F.; Brunialti, Giorgio; Giordani, Paolo; Nascimbene, Juri; Cristofori, Alessandro; Gottardini, E.; Frati, Luisa; Matos, Paula; Batič, Franc; Caporale, Stefania; Fornasier, Maria Francesca; Marmor, Liis; Merinero, Sonia; Núñez-Zapata, Jano; Tõrra, Tiiu; Wolseley, P. A.; Ferretti, Marco

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.03.027

Cited by 14 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The recently developed European standards for lichen biomonitoring (Stofer et al 2012;EN 16413 2014) have been developed as the result of a standardization process carried out in the last few years starting from the Index of Atmospheric Purity (IAP) approach (Hawksworth and Rose 1970;Nimis et al 1990Nimis et al , 1991 and upgrading it with previous guidelines (Asta et al 2002;VDI 3957 2005). Furthermore, also field experience of several European researchers and the results of recent comparative tests (Brunialti et al 2012a;Cristofolini et al 2014) were useful to obtain the current sampling strategy for lichen survey. At the end of this process, to reduce the effect of several possible sources of error (e.g., different size of explored area on the trunk, subjectivity in the positioning of the sampling grid, etc.…”

Section: Lichen Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The process of standardization started in 2007 and took into account the previous European and national guidelines (Asta et al 2002;VDI 2005;AFNOR 2008). In the meantime, some field tests have been performed to obtain information on the type and size of errors and the uncertainty of the methodologies under standardization (Brunialti et al 2012a, Cristofolini et al 2014. To fill this gap, the tests dealt with the entire process from survey design to field measurements.…”

Section: Standardizing Lichen Diversity Samplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sampling and Interpreting Lichen Diversity Data for Biomonitoring Purposes

Giordani

Brunialti

2014

Recent Advances in Lichenology

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Section: Lichen Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Standardizing Lichen Diversity Samplingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sampling and Interpreting Lichen Diversity Data for Biomonitoring Purposes

Giordani

Brunialti

2014

Recent Advances in Lichenology

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“…The operator effect (non-sampling error) has been tackled in numerous studies that have tried to evaluate it on the basis of intercalibration tests between individual operators or groups of operators [29][30][31][32][33]. These tests represent basic activities for the assessment of quality assurance [34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These tests represent basic activities for the assessment of quality assurance [34]. As lichen biomonitoring is based on the identification of all epiphytic lichen species within a sampling grid, it requires very high levels of taxonomic knowledge [6,[29][30][31][32]35,36]. In this regard, it has been shown that the effect of the operator can sometimes be relevant, even when expert lichenologists are involved in the sampling procedure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Different Teams Produce Different Results in Long-Term Lichen Biomonitoring?

et al. 2019

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Lichen biomonitoring programs focus on temporal variations in epiphytic lichen communities in relation to the effects of atmospheric pollution. As repeated surveys are planned at medium to long term intervals, the alternation of different operators is often possible. This involves the need to consider the effect of non-sampling errors (e.g., observer errors). Here we relate the trends of lichen communities in repeated surveys with the contribution of different teams of specialists involved in sampling. For this reason, lichen diversity data collected in Italy within several ongoing biomonitoring programs have been considered. The variations of components of gamma diversity between the surveys have been related to the composition of the teams of operators. As a major result, the composition of the teams significantly affected data comparability: Similarity (S), Species Replacement (R), and Richness Difference (D) showed significant differences between “same” and “partially” versus “different” teams, with characteristics trends over time. The results suggest a more careful interpretation of temporal variations in biomonitoring studies.

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“…Recently, the Comité Européen de Normalization (CEN) has adopted a standard procedure for sampling design and assessment of lichen diversity (Ambient air -Biomonitoring with lichens -Assessing epiphytic lichen diversity; European Standard EN 16413:2014). The sampling strategy included in that document was developed mainly for air pollution monitoring activities and focused only on tree trunks (1-1•5 m above ground) (Cristofolini et al 2014), thus overlooking several additional microhabitats relevant for lichens in forest ecosystems. A reduction of sampling effort on tree trunks has been suggested by previous studies (Nascimbene et al 2010) as a potential strategy to redirect the sampling effort to currently overlooked microhabitats, such as the canopy and coarse woody debris (CWD), and to design sampling schemes that would result in a more comprehensive species capture in forest ecosystems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The inclusion of overlooked lichen microhabitats in standardized forest biodiversity monitoring

Gasparyan¹,

Sipman²,

Marini

et al. 2018

The Lichenologist

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Epiphytic lichens are increasingly included in forest biodiversity monitoring schemes, but most of the standardized guidelines consider only lichens colonizing a small part of tree trunks (1·0–1·5 m) and overlook other important microhabitats, such as fallen branches and stumps. In this paper, we present results of a small-scale pilot study to evaluate the possible advantage of including four distinct microhabitats in standardized procedures for assessing epiphytic lichen diversity. Trunk bases, trunks between 100 and 150 cm above the ground, stumps, and fallen branches were each sampled with a different standardized sampling method along a forest age gradient in temperate deciduous forests of the Caucasian region. Plot-level species richness was contrasted between the standardized sampling procedures of different substrata and a non-probabilistic floristic sampling. The interactions between sampling procedure and stand age were analysed using linear mixed models, and non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and multi-response permutation procedures (MRPP) were used for comparing species composition. Overall, 97 species were recorded, their richness increasing with increasing stand age. Results were consistent across the gradient of stand age and demonstrated that the adoption of standardized sampling procedures which include stumps and fallen branches in addition to tree trunks would increase the capability of maximizing species capture. This approach would allow researchers to evaluate lichen patterns by simultaneously considering the response of different communities sensitive to different stand-related factors. Despite the likelihood that a non-probabilistic floristic survey would give a more exhaustive picture of the plot-level lichen diversity, standardized sampling procedures that include tree trunks, fallen branches and stumps are likely to represent a reasonable trade-off between exhaustiveness and cost-effectiveness.

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Towards the adoption of an international standard for biomonitoring with lichens—Consistency of assessment performed by experts from six European countries

Cited by 14 publications

References 6 publications

Sampling and Interpreting Lichen Diversity Data for Biomonitoring Purposes

Sampling and Interpreting Lichen Diversity Data for Biomonitoring Purposes

Do Different Teams Produce Different Results in Long-Term Lichen Biomonitoring?

The inclusion of overlooked lichen microhabitats in standardized forest biodiversity monitoring

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