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International audience; Implementing agrobiodiversity is a core principle of agro-ecology and organic farming. It is often observed through the lens of crop-livestock integration. However, keeping two or more livestock species or breeds simultaneously on the same farm is a diversification option that has received little attention to date as an option for improving livestock farm sustainability. Here, we present a pan-European analysis of organic multi-species livestock farms to identify most sustainable management strategies. After characterising the sample of 95 farms combining two or more livestock species (cattle or small ruminants, for meat or milk, pig or poultry), we undertook a partial least square regression analysis to relate sustainability indicators (productivity, efficiency, human welfare) with indicators reflecting farm structures and management, including the type of marketing and the level of integration among farm enterprises. We show that unlike expectations, the most sustainable farms do not necessarily exhibit the highest levels of integration. We also elaborate on the methodological advances needed for an analysis covering various types of species and productions at the scale of farming system scale. This work is being finalized and has been carried out in the European project MIX-ENABLE provided by transnational funding bodies, being partners of the H2020 ERA net project, CORE Organic Cofund, and the cofund from the European Commission.

International audience; Most estimates of sea spray aerosol source functions have used indirect means to infer the rate of production as a function of wind speed. Only recently has the technology become available to make high frequency measurements of aerosol spectra suitable for direct eddy correlation determination of the sea spray particle flux. This was accomplished in this study by combining a newly developed fast aerosol particle counter with an ultrasonic anemometer which allowed for eddy covariance measurements of size-segregated particle fluxes. The aerosol instrument is the Compact Lightweight Aerosol Spectrometer Probe (CLASP) ? capable of measuring 8-channel size spectra for mean radii between 0.15 and 3.5 µm at 10 Hz. The first successful measurements were made during the Waves, Air Sea Fluxes, Aerosol and Bubbles (WASFAB) field campaign in October 2005 in Duck (NC, USA). The method and initial results are presented and comparisons are made with recent sea spray source functions from the literature.

Op verzoek van het RIVM (en in opdracht van het Ministerie van Infrastructuur en Milieu) is een oriënterend onderzoek uitgevoerd naar de concentraties van ultrafijn stof (UFP) in de omgeving van Schiphol. ECN heeft deze verkennende metingen gecoördineerd. Aan de meetcampagne hebben TNO, VITO en RIVM meegewerkt. Gemeten is op een tiental locaties rondom Schiphol met verschillende instrumenten. Om een goede vergelijking mogelijk te maken is vooraf een meting gedaan met alle instrumenten op één locatie. De metingen zelf vonden vervolgens in 2 fases plaats. Fase 1 waren oriënterende metingen om vast te stellen welke concentratieniveaus rondom Schiphol voorkomen en hoe de ruimtelijke verdeling grofweg is. Met behulp van, onder andere, deze informatie, zijn locaties gekozen waar vervolgens gedurende 4-6 weken aantallen en gemiddelde groottes van UFP-deeltjes zijn gemeten. In het voorliggende rapport wordt de opzet van de meetcampagne in technische en praktische zin toegelicht. Daarna worden resultaten beschreven aan de hand van tijdreeksen en concentratiewindrozen van deeltjesaantallen en -grootteverdelingen op de verschillende meetlocaties. Voor een diepgaande interpretatie van de meetgegevens en beschrijving van de resultaten wordt verwezen naar de (overkoepelende) RIVM rapportage.

Intensive measurements of submicron aerosol particles and their chemical composition were performed with an Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) at the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR) in Cabauw, NL. The campaign lasted nearly one year from July 2012 to June 2013 as part of the ACTRIS project. Including black carbon data an average particulate mass concentration of 9.50 μg m−3 was obtained during the whole campaign with dominant contributions from ammonium nitrate (45 %), organic aerosol (OA, 29 %), and ammonium sulfate (19 %). 12 exceedances of the World Health Organization (WHO) PM2.5 daily mean limit (25 μg m−3) were observed at this rural site using PM1 instrumentation only. Ammonium nitrate and OA represented the largest contributors to total particulate matter during periods of exceedance.Source apportionment of OA was performed season-wise by Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) using the Multilinear Engine 2 (ME-2) controlled via the source finder (SoFi). Primary organic aerosols were attributed mainly to traffic (8–16 % contribution to total OA, averaged season-wise) and biomass burning (0–23 %). Secondary organic aerosols (SOA, 61–84 %) dominated the organic fraction during the whole campaign, particularly on days with high mass loadings. A SOA factor which is attributed to humic-like substances (HULIS) was identified as a highly oxidized background aerosol in Cabauw. This shows the importance of atmospheric ageing processes for aerosol concentration at this rural site. Due to the large secondary fraction, the reduction of particulate mass at this rural site is challenging on a local scale.

Major benefits of plastics recycling are reduced depletion of non-renewable resources and reduction of world-wide waste. Traditional thermo-mechanical recycling causes reduction of mechanical properties for most thermoplastics. Down-cycled materials may nevertheless be suited for certain useful applications. Developing such applications may be a step towards more effective future use of resources. Increased application of recycled thermoplastics is generally preferable over landfills, or waste lying around in some parts of the world. Different recycled high-impact polystyrenes (HIPS) from TVs were mechanically tested, as well as mixtures of them. Mixtures of a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and a polypropylene (PP) were tested as well, representing a large portion of mixed plastics waste. A contribution was made to a process improvement for creating products from street waste in Kenya. Mixing different recycled HIPS grades gave no significant changes in melt flow index and impact strength. One mixture showed a significant reduction in tensile strength. In PP-LDPE mixtures there was an indication of improved mechanical impact resistance of the PP by addition of LDPE in several percentages. In Kenya a separation process utilizing simple equipment