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The present editorial 2020 continues the series of status reports in Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) in previous years 2017 and 2019 (Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 77: 8, 2018, Kolditz et al. in Environ Earth Sci 79: 11, 2020). The year 2020 coming to an end was heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic affecting all areas of life including research work and, therefore, scientific publishing as well ("Introduction"). One bright spot which shows longevity of journals that produce a quality product is that Environmental Earth Sciences (EES) is celebrating its 45th anniversary of publication. To this extent EES continues the tradition to honor the most cited papers contributing to the 2020 Impact Factor (IF) ("Highly and most cited topics") and provide information on the current status of EES as well as an outlook to 2021 ("Progress report")

While it is well recognized that the frequency and intensity of flood events are increasing worldwide, the environmental, economic, and societal consequences of remobilization and distribution of pollutants during flood events are not widely recognized. Loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and monetary cleanup costs associated with floods are important direct effects. However, there is a lack of attention towards the indirect effects of pollutants that are remobilized and redistributed during such catastrophic flood events, particularly considering the known toxic effects of substances present in flood-prone areas. The global examination of floods caused by a range of extreme events (e.g., heavy rainfall, tsunamis, extra- and tropical storms) and subsequent distribution of sediment-bound pollutants are needed to improve interdisciplinary investigations. Such examinations will aid in the remediation and management action plans necessary to tackle issues of environmental pollution from flooding. River basin-wide and coastal lowland action plans need to balance the opposing goals of flood retention, catchment conservation, and economical use of water.

Crude oil as a raw material, and all its refined products that are used as fuel, is a highly complex mixture of a large number of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons and various nitrogen, sulphur and oxygen compounds (NSO compounds). On the other hand, there are some new inorganic and organic compounds formed during the usage of the refined products. It can be easily concluded that they are very serious environmental pollutants. The man has a duty and responsibility to clean the contaminated segments of the environment by petroleum and return them to the form in which they were before pollution. In this sense, remediation procedures are undertaken. Microbial bioremediation procedure (i.e. bioremediation), is justifiably considered the most efficient remediation procedure. This paper will present research aimed at optimizing the conditions for bioremediation of various segments of the environment (in the first place of underground waters and soils) contaminated with oil-Type pollutants. This research covers a ten-year long pathway starting from the laboratory experiments, through ex situ processes, then in situ conditions and finally to practical application.

Protecting our water resources in terms of quality and quantity is considered one of the big challenges of the twenty-first century, which requires global and multidisciplinary solutions. A specific threat to water resources, in particular, is the increased occurrence and frequency of flood events due to climate change which has significant environmental and socioeconomic impacts. In addition to climate change, flooding (or subsequent erosion and run-off) may be exacerbated by, or result from, land use activities, obstruction of waterways, or urbanization of floodplains, as well as mining and other anthropogenic activities that alter natural flow regimes. Climate change and other anthropogenic induced flood events threaten the quantity of water as well as the quality of ecosystems and associated aquatic life. The quality of water can be significantly reduced through the unintentional distribution of pollutants, damage of infrastructure, and distribution of sediments and suspended materials during flood events. To understand and predict how flood events and associated distribution of pollutants may impact ecosystem and human health, as well as infrastructure, large-scale interdisciplinary collaborative efforts are required, which involve ecotoxicologists, hydrologists, chemists, geoscientists, water engineers, and socioeconomists. The research network “project house water” consists of a number of experts from a wide range of disciplines and was established to improve our current understanding of flood events and associated societal and environmental impacts. The concept of project house and similar seed fund and boost fund projects was established by the RWTH Aachen University within the framework of the German excellence initiative with support of the German research foundation (DFG) to promote and fund interdisciplinary research projects and provide a platform for scientists to collaborate on innovative, challenging research. Project house water consists of six pro

The aim of this study is to identify potential toxic or environmentally relevant organic compounds in the aquifers of the Amynteo hydrogeological basin and to investigate a possible link of the identified organic contaminants with the Pliocene Amynteo lignites. For these purposes, 10 groundwater samples were collected from this area. A sequential liquid–liquid extraction procedure was applied and all extracts were analyzed by gas chromatography and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) by means of a non-target screening approach. The results of the GC–MS analyses of the extracts are presented and discussed in this work. The identified organic compounds with a potential environmental relevance are: 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol diisobutyrate, triacetine, isopropyl palminate, isopropyl myristate, tributyl-, triethyl- and trioctylphosphates, N,N-dibutyl formamide, methyl dihydrojasmonate, nonylphenols and bumetrizole. However, all these organic micropollutants can derive either by anthropogenic emissions (plasticizers, industrial pollutants, pesticides, etc.) or by contaminations from the pump and the borehole structure itself. Noteworthy, coal-derived organic molecules (such as anthracene, fluorene, pyrene, phenanthrene, etc.) have not been detected. Hence, an influence of coal deposits to the groundwater quality is considered negligible.

Contamination of water resources is one of the major problems to be faced for environment preservation and sustainability. Although anti-pollution strategies taken in the last half-century have consistently reduced in surface water the amount and the presence of many recognised contaminants, other potentially hazardous chemicals are being released into the environment, together with new substances that are continuously synthesized and whose dangerous properties are not well known. Water-pollutant monitoring makes typically use of methods developed for target analysis, focused on priority pollutants. The monitoring of target compounds based on mass spectrometry (MS) and selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode is often insuffi cient to defi nitely assess the quality of surface water, just because the presence of only a limited number of potential pollutants is considered. Also potentially harmful non-target pollutants simultaneously present must be taken into account. In the determination of semi-polar and polar pollutants, liquid chromatography coupled with tandem MS is generally the technique of choice. To obtain a complete information on water composition, full-spectrum acquisition techniques, better if with the possibility to obtain information about MS/MS spectra, are required. For this purpose, hybrid mass spectrometers like triple quadrupole/linear ion trap (QqLIT), hybrid quadrupole/time-of-fl ight (QqTOF) MS and linear ion trap/orbitrap analyzer must be used. The last two instruments are the masters of the nontarget approach, because their can offer the advantage of high resolution MS, that combined with a good MS accuracy allows to identify the unknown species. In addition, the hybrid nature of such instruments allows to acquire during a single chromatographic run also information about high resolution MS/MS spectra, that are fundamental in order to attribute to each unknown species a probable chemical structure. An interesting advantage associated with high