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Katla volcano, located beneath the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap in southern Iceland, is capable of producing catastrophic jökulhlaup. The Icelandic Civil Protection (ICP), in conjunction with scientists, local police and emergency managers, developed mitigation strategies for possible jökulhlaup produced during future Katla eruptions. These strategies were tested during a full-scale evacuation exercise in March 2006. A positive public response during a volcanic crisis not only depends upon the public's knowledge of the evacuation plan but also their knowledge and perception of the possible hazards. To improve the effectiveness of residents' compliance with warning and evacuation messages it is important that emergency management officials understand how the public interpret their situation in relation to volcanic hazards and their potential response during a crisis and apply this information to the ongoing development of risk mitigation strategies. We adopted a mixed methods approach in order to gain a broad understanding of residents' knowledge and perception of the Katla volcano in general, jökulhlaup hazards specifically and the regional emergency evacuation plan. This entailed field observations during the major evacuation exercise, interviews with key emergency management officials and questionnaire survey interviews with local residents. Our survey shows that despite living within the hazard zone, many residents do not perceive that their homes could be affected by a jökulhlaup, and many participants who perceive that their homes are safe, stated that they would not evacuate if an evacuation warning was issued. Alarmingly, most participants did not receive an evacuation message during the exercise. However, the majority of participants who took part in the exercise were positive about its implementation. This assessment of resident knowledge and perception of volcanic hazards and the evacuation plan is the first of its kind in this region. Our data can be used as a baseline by the ICP for more detailed studies in Iceland's volcanic regions.

Arable land covers approximately one fourth of the global land area, but only half of it can be used efficiently for cultivation to feed the growing population. Modern agriculture has developed highly productive food and biomass-producing systems based on industrial principles, which has lead to a considerable environmental burden. Organic agriculture has expanded as a movement towards more sustainable food production, which aims to maintain the key functions and ecosystems services of soils. At present, approximately 0.7% of global and 4% of European agricultural lands are managed organically (Willer and Youssefi, 2007). Soil organic matter (SOM) and its turnover play a pivotal role in the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and in the response of terrestrial carbon to future climate scenarios. Its fate and dynamics are mainly governed and understood by its properties and physiology of the soil organisms (von Lützow and Kögel-Knabler, 2009). A key to understand and define a sustainable agricultural soil system is to quantify the impact of different land use on soil structure and biogeochemistry, with emphasis on nutrient turnover. The goal of our future research is to evaluate SOM pools in different soil aggregate sizes under different farming systems (organic vs. conventional) and link them to soil biodiversity. Soils were selected along cultivation age gradients under subarctic (Iceland, Andosols) and continental climate (Austria, Chernozems). The further outcome of this research is to identify quantifiable natural indicators for farm sustainability assessments. Gained data will also be linked to energy balance and food productivity in order to get more insights in benefits of different farming practices.

Sulphide-rich tailings constitute a major environmental concern due to the acid drainage (AD) production and release of potentially toxic elements (PTE). Therefore, the management of active mine dumps and the reclamation of inactive ones require to reduce the exposure of the possible environmental receptors to contamination. A common, critical feature of mine dumps is the heterogeneity of the tailing materials that may complicate the quantitative prediction of potential contamination. On the other hand, heterogeneity can be a key for a more rational and cost-effective remediation, given a good characterization of the dump materials. Moreover, mine wastes often contain valuable components and therefore a suitable solution is to make positive use of them. In fact, as mining and processing (comminution and concentration) constitute a major cost of the ore mineral cycle, the availability of partly-processed, although low-grade resources may represent an interesting opportunity of exploitation. The present work is a case-study for a quantitative flow-sheet-related approach to the aim of heterogeneous sulphide-rich tailing dumps management. We selected the former processing site of Reps, in the Mirdita District (northern Albania), where we characterized two tailing dumps and assessed the contamination. Moreover, we evaluated the concentration potential of commodities, namely pyrite and gold, from the tailing materials. We analysed the Reps tailing samples in order to evaluate mineralogy, grain size and bulk chemical composition, concentration of PTE, the presence and persistence of AD. The data set splits in two classes, based on the sulphide content. The reconstruction of the former processing flow-sheet allowed us to recognize this pattern as resulting from two distinct processing stages and to quantitatively improve the AD prediction results. We selected a shaking table concentration method for testing separation of pyrite and gold, by taking into consideration the need of reducing both costs and volumes. The effectiveness of the method was verified by monitoring both the feed and the output materials for grain size, geochemical and mineralogical parameters. The optimal grain size of the input samples was obtained through a closed-circuit regrinding and milling method. The concentrate output shows an enrichment in pyrite in all the samples. The concentrates constitute 16-37.4 wt% of the shaking table output, depending on the initial sulphide content of the sample. Au concentration data were gained by Activation Analysis on selected grain size classes, in order to verify the correlation of Au concentration and the particle size distribution. Preliminary data show that in our samples a valuable recovery can be achieved by sieving in order to separate the Au- rich (up to 580 ppb) fine fraction (