Monte Verita

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop on "Soil Monitoring: Methods for Early Detection and Surveying of Soil Contamination and Degradation", held at the ETH seminar centre "Stefano Franscini" of Monte Verita, Ascona (Switzerland) from October 18 - 23, 1992. Seventy participants, representing a variety of institutions, nations, and disciplines, discussed the concepts, approaches, status, gaps, problems, and perspectives of soil pollution monitoring. The idea for this workshop came from A. Desaules when he was installing the Swiss National Soil Monitoring Network (NABO) as his doubts about the philosophy of soil monitoring prevailing at that time increased. This philosophy essentially equated soil mo­ nitoring with repetitive surveys of soil pollutant concentrations at pennanent observation sites. He sought others interested in discussing alternatives, and he found a ready partner in the ETH-Institute for Terrestrial Ecology. Soon it was realized that a discussion of the NABO would immediately raise general questions with respect to the conceptual basis of soil monitoring and that a minimum agreement on this basis was indispensable to discuss more specific problems related to the realization of the NABO. As a result, a workshop was organized whose objectives were in particular (i) an assessment of current knowledge on soil monitoring by pennanent networks, (ii) a syn­ thesis of the experience from different disciplines related to soil monitoring, (iii) the identification ofresearch gaps with respect to long-tenn and large-scale soil monitoring, and (iv) the design of a platfonn for the development of soil monitoring strategies and methodology.