October, 2012
Newsletter
Issue 1
Welcome
to the first
newsletter for the MOSSCLONE
project which is financed by the EU
Commission’s Seventh Framework
Programme. The aim of this project
is to develop and implement a method
to control the air quality by using
a devitalized moss clone as passive
contaminant sensor.
This
newsletter
introduces
the MOSSCLONE project which
encompasses the hard work of more
than 30 experts from 11 organisations
representing 5 EU countries (Spain,
Italy, France, Ireland and Germany).
We are happy to report about
some great work that is being done
on this EU organisations. European
scientists with greater knowledge of
the moss and its relation to pollution
are included in this project in order to
get the basic tool for the control of air
pollution. For this purpose, they are
studying what are the best moss species
and optimize the “moss technique” to
obtain more accurate, economic and
realistic results than those made by
traditional equipments.
The MOSSCLONE Newsletter
is published twice a year by the project
manager. If you wish to be included or
taken off the distribution list, please
contact him (carlosbrais.carballeira@
usc.es).
Edited by Carlos Carballeira
What is MOSSCLONE?
Two European Directives on ambient air quality assessment (96/62/EC of 27
September 1996 and 2008/50/EC of May 2008) obliges the Member States
to deliver periodically precise information about the air quality and the
related health within their territories to ensure that the European population
is aware of it.
For compliance to both Directives, States usually use monitoring stations,
but these stations are only useful when macro-pollutants are assessed in
agglomerations. For measurement of other pollutants included in the
Directives there are technical difficulties and their analysis on air is too
expensive. As a consequence there is a lack of representative data through
Europe. In addition, data from automatic devices are accurate but too limited
in number of pollutants and to describe spatio-temporal trends of pollutants.
Due to the limitations of traditional methods, bio-monitoring is an adequate
alternative to acquire data about the levels of pollutants that affect European
citizens and makes it possible to evaluate the state of environmental
parameters inf luenced by synergistic effects of different pollutants.
Among the available bio-monitors, terrestrial mosses are especially adequate
for air quality assessment due to their high efficiency in loading both
particulate and gaseous determinants of organic, inorganic, and radioactive
pollutants.
However, there are some problems that can arise when using mosses for
the current moss-bag technique: the absence of well-suited moss species
living in urban, extra-urban, and even indoor reference environments; the
bags are prepared from mosses naturally grown in unpolluted areas, so its
availability and the natural variability on moss elemental composition could
vary depending on natural and anthropogenic causes.
The solution to avoid these problems is to cultivate in the laboratory
a moss clone to always have homogeneous material with the same
initial concentrations to prepare the bags. In this way, a high degree of
standardization would be reached and would allow a comparison of the
exposed mosses in the same way by means of Enrichment Factor or Net
Enrichment.
An additional, but highly relevant problem that usually affects the use of biomonitors is the lack of standardized protocols and methodologies. The lack
of such protocols hampers comparison of the results obtained in different
studies, and sometimes limits the conclusions that can be reached. The
MOSSCLONE approach would overcome all these issues, thereby improving
data quality and reproducibility, and therefore usability of environmental
data collected throughout Europe.
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Project Goals
In light of the issues discussed in the previous section, the main
MOSSCLONE objectives are:
1. Selection of moss species on the basis of their use as bio-monitor,
their distribution and their physico-chemical characteristics.
2. Creating a pilot bioreactor for the cultivation and the selection
of the most suitable species.
3. Characterization of the selected moss clone.
4. Scaling up moss clone cultivation.
5. Design and methodological standardization of the moss-bag
technique.
6. Moss-bags validation versus current state-of-the-art methods
for air pollution monitoring.
7. Perform an initial validation of its usefulness for the detection of
atmospheric small scale pollution focus.
RECENT MOSSCLONE EVENTS
Kick-off Meeting
This work was carried out as
part of WP1 (Project Management)
and
WP5
(Exploitation
and
dissemination), of which the main
objectives
were:
the
physical
contact of MOSSCLONE members
(partners and advisory board), the
implementation of the administrative,
scientific, technical and ethical
issues related to the project and to
publicize its beginning. The meeting
took place on the 10th, 11th and 12th
of May at the Emprendia building
from University of Santiago de
Compostela (Spain). This meeting was
inaugurated and mossclone members
were welcomed by the Research
Vicechancellor and the international
coordinator of the host university
(USC). The project coordinator also
welcomed the attendants and talked
about the basics of the project and
its prospects. All partners presented
their companies or departments and
WP leaders presented their tasks and
members. Some presentations about
critical issues, the detailed plan
for the first year, training sessions
on FP7 reporting and the life cycle
assessment were also performed. An
special emphasis was developed on
the discussion of relevant concepts
and state of the art research and
technology for the project. In general,
there was a productive and peaceful
exchange of ideas. There was also a
demonstration of the project website
(http://www.mossclone.eu/) in which
results at each phase of the project
will be posted.
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All partners and two members
of the advisory board participated in
the meeting. A picture and a list of
the meeting attendants is shown.
The kick-off meeting in
Santiago consisted on three days
of presentations, workshops and
fieldtrips which aimed to:
selection of species, cultivation,
clonning, characterization, exposition
and sampling scenarios
• Synchronise the next year of
planning for all the workpackages
• Gather the information required for
D5.5 Kick-Off Meeting, Santiago de
Compostela
• Achieve the first milestone: Clone
cultivation
• Learn more about each partner
• Set the context of MOSSCLONE
• Discuss the scope of the project:
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FORTHCOMING EVENTS
1st WP Leaders meeting on Naples
Three meetings of the WP Leaders
will be held to strengthen the
collaboration between WPs, and
to allow the WP Leaders to better
tune their activities to those of other
WPs. Each meeting will have a focus
on one scientific WP (WPs 2-4,
respectively), but the progress of all
WPs will be presented. Schedule: First
meeting (month 10, at AMRA) will
focus on WP2 activities (Mossclone
cultivation and characterization).
Tasks
Recent
Current
Literature review for
species selection
Species selection
As regards the most
appropriate species, the
information available to
date indicates that the
most
commonly
used
species are those of the
genus Sphagnum (although
this genus is absent from
several areas). However, in
order to have a wider range
of possibilities for the
cultivation and monitoring
tasks
our
researchers
have selected also the six
species of moss most used,
important (as biomonitor)
or available after Sphagnum
spp.:
-Pseudoscleropodium
purum
-Hypnum cupressiforme
-Pleurozium schreberi
-Hylocomium splendens
-Rhynchostegium
riparioides
-Brachythecium rutabulum
Several of the Task 2.1
species will be selected
for in vitro-cultivation.
This is to reduce the risk
of species unable to be
axenically grown, or that
present other cultivation
problems.
Samples
of
these species, collected
throughout Europe, will
be subjected to physicalchemical characterization:
i) acid-base titration to
measure the number of
metal
(proton)-binding
groups and surface stability
constants;
ii)
specific
surface area measurements
to reveal the maximal
surface
adsorption
capacity; iii) microscopic
and
spectroscopic
characterization to reveal
the physical heterogeneity
of the surfaces, and bulk
sorbents and chemical
functional
groups
responsible
for
metal
binding, respectively.
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Upcoming
• Moss clone
cultivation
• Moss bag preparation
• Standardization of
essays
-Mesh effect
-Shape effect
-Size effect
-Moss weight effect
-Height effect
-Exposure time effect
• Analytical
optimization
Sphagnum
PARTNERS/INSTITUTIONS
University of Santiago de Compostela
The University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), founded
in 1495, comprises 28 faculties and over 30,000 students and
2,100 academic staff. The Ecotoxicology and Plant Ecophysiology
research group (Department of Ecology, Faculty of Biology) is
one of the best groups in the whole world. The group consists
of about 17 researchers and investigates ecotoxicology and plant
ecophysiology, focusing on research in the area of biomonitoring.
The current activities
Assoc. Prof. Ángel Fernández
of the group are mainly
Assoc. Prof. Jesús Aboal
focused on both passive
Prof. Alejo Carballeira
and active moss biomonitoring of air quality. USC,
Assoc. Prof. Carlos Real
the coordinator partner, will have full responsibility
Ángela Ares, PhD student
for fulfilling the obligations as described in the EU
Teresa Boquete, PhD student
contract, as well as for reporting and accounting.
Zulema Varela Río, PhD student
University of Freiburg
Founded in 1457, the University of Freiburg (ALU-FR) is one of the
oldest German universities and is now one of the nation’s leading research
and teaching institutions as evidenced by its elite status among the nine
German Universities of Excellence and its membership in the League
of European Research Universities. It is involved in more than 60 FP7
projects.
With many years of experience in molecular handling of bryophytes,
the Department of Plant Biotechnology (Faculty of Biology) has a wellestablished set of protocols
Juliana Parsons, PhD
enabling a broad range of
Prof. Ralf Reski
research activities in molecular biology and
Anna Beike, PhD student
biotechnology, including bioinformatics, genomics
and proteomics.
University of A Coruña
The University of A Coruña (UDC) includes over 152
research groups and its current student population is approx. 25,000.
The research group of Applied Analytical Chemistry (QANAP) it
is considered as a group of “excellence and competitive research”.
The group has reached a critical mass of around 30 researchers
which devote their activity to the development of analytical methodologies for the analysis of
chemicals relevant to the industrial, environmental and agroalimentary fields, environmental
assessment, chemometrics and quality control.
A wide variety of analytical procedures have
Prof Purificación López-Mahía
been developed for the analysis of compounds of
Prof Soledad Muniategui-Lorenzo
very different nature in samples of atmospheric
Prof Darío Prada-Rodríguez
particulate matter, ash, coal, moss, biota, sediments
María Piñeiro-Iglesias, PhD
and sea, superficial and drinking water.
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AMRA Scarl
AMRA Scarl is an entirely public, non-profit company. It was
established in 2005 as a result of an EU-funded project aimed at promoting
innovative research and technology in the field of analysis and monitoring
of environmental risks. The leading Partner of AMRA is the University of
Naples “Federico II”, the other Partners being four public Universities, the
National Research Council (CNR), the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
and the Zoological Station “Anton Dohrn”, Naples. AMRA operates in the fields of natural and
anthropogenic risk assessment and attenuation (seismic, volcanic, hydrogeological, industrial,
biological risks), waste recycling, homeland security, land use planning and vulnerability of
the marine coastal system. AMRA has (co-)coordinated two FP6 projects. In FP7, AMRA is
coordinating the CP CLUVA (CLimate change and Urban Vulnerability in Africa) and is in the
coordinating team of the CP SAFELAND (Living with landslide risk in Europe: Assessment,
effects of global change, and risk management strategies), the CP REAKT (Strategies and
tools for Real Time EArthquake RisK ReducTion)
Prof Simonetta Giordano
and in other 6 projects. The AMRA research group
Prof Paola Adamo
involved in the present project has a long experience
Prof Roberto Bargagli
in the use of bryophytes and lichens to monitor
Prof. Mauro Tretiach
atmospheric pollutants.
Valeria Spagnuolo, PhD
TeLabs S.L.
T.E. Laboratories Ltd. is a chemistry company with 6 operating
divisions: 1) Environmental chemistry, 2) Transformer oil analysis, 3)
Lubricating oil analysis, 4) Manufacture of laboratory standards and
chemicals, 5) Fuel dyes and preservatives, 6) Research and Development
laboratory. The comprehensive environmental testing laboratory provides
analytical services to a large and diverse range of industries. This
laboratory is accredited to the International standard
Mark Bowkett
ISO 17025 and over 15,000 samples are received per
Breda Moore, BSc
annum in this laboratory.
Saioa Elordui-Zapatarietxe, PhD
Orion S.R.L.
Orion SRL is a market leader in the design, project engineering, production and sales of
environmental continuous monitoring systems.
It offers its highly qualified commercial and
technical staff in the market of:
• Air quality monitoring
• Emission monitoring and process analysis
• Water quality monitoring
• Management and maintenance of networks, systems and equipments
• Management and validation of environmental monitoring data
• Research and development of new technologies
The products made by Orion include complete and flexible mobile stations, stationary air
quality and traffic pollution monitoring stations,
Pietro Paolo Perna
emissions and process analysis systems, personalized
Fabio Cercato
management software and mobile stations to manage
Marco Panunzi
environmental emergencies.
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Biovía Environmental Consultant
Biovía Consultor Ambiental (Biovia) is a spin-off company of the
Ecotoxicology Research Group of USC. The company is dedicated to
designing and marketing new environmental biomonitoring tools (air, river
and ocean). In July 2009, the Xunta de Galicia (autonomic department)
qualified Biovia as NEBT´S, a Spanish qualification meaning “high tech
start-up company” for its technology and innovation nature which was
awarded with the first prize in the X Concurso de Proyectos Empresariales
Innovadores (2010, USC). The research team of
Ana Isabel Rey-Asensio
Currently Biovia is opening the market in Spain in
Verónica Fernández González
the field of biomonitoring.
TecnoAmbiente S.L.
TecAmb SL is an Inspection Entity accredited
by the National Accreditation of Spain (ENAC). The
company is monitoring air emissions and wastewater,
according to UNE/EN ISO/IEC 17020. The laboratory is also accredited by ENAC (UNE /
EN ISO / IEC 17025) for testing liquid environmental samples (physical-chemical tests on
wastewater and inland) and air quality (air emissions
Leis Vidal, Francisco
from stationary sources). It is currently integrated
Villa Lojo, Mª del Carmen, PhD
into the Business Unit Consulting TRADEBE
Bouza Bouza, Guillermo
SPAIN.
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
The laboratory ’Géosciences Environnement Toulouse’ of
the French CNRS and the Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse (UPS),
formally known as the GET, is among the top geochemical training and
research facilities in Europe. The GET has published over 500 articles
in top journals over the past 10 years, most notably quantifying, in
detail, the rates and mechanisms of natural processes from the atomic
to global scale.
Over the past decade, this laboratory has extensively studied metal
interaction with biological
Oleg S. Pokrovsky, PhD
surfaces (diatoms, plants, bacteria) using a wide
Prof Jerome Viers, PhD
variety of the state-of-the art macroscopic,
Jeroen Sonke, PhD
microscopic, and spectroscopic techniques.
Maderas Ornanda S.A. Maderas Ornanda, S.A. manufactures wooden containers
for different purposes, wood chips and wood pellets. The raw
material is pine wood from pine plantations from NW Spain.
The SME owns quality certification ISO 9001 and sustainable
forest management certification PEGC.
The enterprise is concerned about environment pollution and it is interested in cooperation in
the project as a scenario where the MOSSCLONE
Lois Agrelo Hermo
moss-bags could be tested.
Dominico Tinelli
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RECENT PAPERS FROM OUR PARTNERS
Giordano S., Adamo P., Spagnuolo V., Tretiach M., Bargagli R. 2012. Accumulation
of airborne trace elements in mosses, lichens and synthetic materials exposed at
urban monitoring stations: Towards a harmonisation of the moss-bag technique.
Chemosphere (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2012.07.006
Terracciano S., Giordano S., Spagnuolo V. (2012). A further tessera in the two
centuries old debate on the Hypnum cupressiforme complex (Hypnaceae, Bryopsida).
Plant Systematics and Evolution, 298: 229-238.
Ares A., Aboal J.R., Carballeira A., Giordano S., Adamo P., Fernández J.A. 2012.
Moss bag biomonitoring: a methodological review. Science of the Total Environment
432, 143–158.
Tretiach M., Bertuzzi S., Candotto Carniel F., 2012. Heat shock treatments: a new
safe approach against lichen growth on outdoor stone surfaces. Environmental
Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es3006755
Tretiach M., Pavanetto S., Pittao E., Sanità di Toppi L., Piccotto M., 2012 Water
availability modifies tolerance to photo-oxidative pollutants in transplants of the
lichen Flavoparmelia caperata. Oecologia 168: 589-599 DOI: 10.1007/s00442-0112104-z
Calendar
Meet our partners in the following forthcoming events:
• XXV annual meeting of the Italian Lichelogical Society, 2-5 October, 2012,
Rome (Italy).
• VI International Workshop on Biomonitoring of Atmospheric Pollution
(BIOMAP), 15-19 October, 2012, Çeşme (Turkey).
• II International Conference on Antimicrobial Research (ICAR2012), 21 - 23
November 2012, Lisbon (Portugal).
About us
Find out more on our website,
Find Me on
Facebook
www.mossclone.eu
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@MOSSCLONE
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