Virginie Hutsemekers

• Belgian Interregional Agency

The sensitivity of air quality model responses to modifications in input data (e.g. emissions, meteorology and boundary conditions) or model configurations is recognized as an important issue for air quality modelling applications in support of air quality plans. In the framework of FAIRMODE (Forum of Air Quality Modelling in Europe, https://fairmo...

At the interface between atmosphere and vegetation, epiphytic floras have been largely used as indicators of air quality. The recovery of epiphytes from high levels of SO2 pollution has resulted in major range changes, whose interpretation has, however, been challenged by concomitant variation in other pollutants as well as climate change. Here, we...

The increasing availability of low-cost sensors and open source projects make it easier than ever for a maker to build his own air quality node. Nonetheless, depending on one’s goal and its related data quality objective, to customize an existing project or to build a specific printed circuit board may still be very useful. In the framework of the...

Commonly, population exposure is evaluated by crossing data of atmospheric pollution and population density maps. The former are usually actual measurements or simulated concentrations; depending on the approach or the model resolution, very different patterns may appear both in space and time, so that conclusions can vary significantly. The latter...

We are presenting an evaluation of the outcomes of the FAIRMODE & AQUILA intercomparison exercise (IE) on spatial representativeness (SR). The assessment of the spatial representativeness (SR) of air quality monitoring stations is an important subject that is linked to several highly topical areas, including risk assessment and population exposure,...

The challenge is the integration of citizens as “community-based” observation providers, giving the odour perception and discomfort and getting feed-back in real time from a learning monitoring system. The level of annoyance de-pends on how odours are emitted and in what intensity, their dispersion under ambient atmospheric conditions and finally o...

Hydrochory plays a key role in the maintenance, diversity and evolution of aquatic plants and has traditionally been thought to (i) decrease or erase patterns of isolation-by-distance, (ii) increase outbreeding, and (iii) result in a downstream increase of genetic diversity. These hypotheses, which are especially relevant in organisms with water-me...

The challenge of OMNISCIENTIS is to develop a community based odour monitoring and information system to mitigate odour annoyance and to foster citizens' participation in environmental governance. The core is an information system collecting various data of odour emissions obtained by electronic noses and other sensors, meteorological conditions an...

Bryophyte floras typically exhibit extremely low levels of endemism. The interpretation, that this might reflect taxonomic shortcomings, is tested here for the Macaronesian flora, using the moss species complex of Rhynchostegium riparioides as a model. The deep polyphyly of R. riparioides across its distribution range reveals active differentiation...

Islands have traditionally been considered as migratory and evolutionary dead ends for two main reasons: island colonizers are typically assumed to lose their dispersal power, and continental back colonization has been regarded as unlikely because of niche preemption. The hypothesis that islands might actually represent dynamic refugia and migrator...

Genetic diversity and structure are described in the aquatic moss Platyhypnidium riparioides to assess its dispersal ability at a regional scale and to determine whether patterns of genetic differentiation correlate with environmental variation. Variation at six nuclear microsatellite loci from 50 populations in southern Belgium was investigated th...

Eight microsatellite loci from the aquatic moss Platyhypnidium riparioides were identified using the method of microsatellite-enriched libraries. Polymorphism was assessed in a sample of four populations of 20 individuals each from four streams of the Meuse hydrographic basin in southern Belgium. The markers amplified three to seven alleles per loc...

Dispersal ability is a factor of prime importance to explain biotic distributions. Yet, it is extremely difficult to measure directly. In this study, we take advantage of the natural experimental design of slag heap colonization in Belgium to document the timing and range of dispersal of bryophytes at the landscape scale. On the basis of a species...