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The joint impact of human activities and climate change on natural resources lead to biodiversity loss. Therefore, it is important to select protected areas through systematic conservation planning. The present study assessed how representative natural habitats are protected under the nature conservation network, and to identify new—but so far insufficiently—protected areas containing these habitats for sustainable management. We used the Marxan model to select the most valuable insufficiently protected natural habitats in the Czech Republic as a representative example for a conservation strategy for Central–Eastern European environments. We set three conservation targets (25%, 50%, and 75%), defining how much percent area of valuable representative natural habitats should be added to the area of the habitats already included in the Nature Protection Network. To implement these conservation targets it is necessary to preserve 22,932 ha, 72,429, ha and 124,363 ha respectively of the conservation targets occurring in the insufficiently protected areas, and 17,255 ha, 51,620 ha, and 84,993 ha respectively of the conservation features in the areas without protection status. Marxan was revealed to be an appropriate tool to select the most valuable and insufficiently protected natural habitats for sustainable management.

This Milestone, namely M3.3, is part of Task 3.3 “Downscaling of future climate projections at the case-study scale and their transfer to the Partners”. The aim of M3.3 is to outline the results of the climate change evaluation over the investigated pilot sites. For the future projections of the climate variables (precipitation and temperature), the data provided by EURO-CORDEX initiative under two emission scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) are used. The main information on the pilot sites, available data, analyses and results are presented. The data are freely downloadable from the web repository https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7247977. This project is part of the PRIMA Programme supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 1923.

The influence of compost on the growth of bean plants irrigated with As-contaminated waters and its influence on the mobility of As in the soils and the uptake of As (as NaAs(III)O2) by plant components was studied at various compost application rates (3·10(4) and 6·10(4) kg ha(-1)) and at three As concentrations (1, 2 and 3 mg kg(-1)). The biomass and As and P concentrations of the roots, shoots and beans were determined at harvest time, as well as the chlorophyll content of the leaves and nonspecific and specifically bound As in the soil. The bean plants exposed to As showed typical phytotoxicity symptoms; no plants however died over the study. The biomass of the bean plants increased with the increasing amounts of compost added to the soil, attributed to the phytonutritive capacity of compost. Biomass decreased with increasing As concentrations, however, the reduction in the biomass was significantly lower with the addition of compost, indicating that the As phytotoxicity was alleviated by the compost. For the same As concentration, the As content of the roots, shoots and beans decreased with increasing compost added compared to the Control. This is due to partial immobilization of the As by the organic functional groups on the compost, either directly or through cation bridging. Most of the As adsorbed by the bean plants accumulated in the roots, while a scant allocation of As occurred in the beans. Hence, the addition of compost to soils could be used as an effective means to limit As accumulation in crops from As-contaminated waters.

This work has been developed under the AGROinLOG Project, “Demonstration of innovative integrated biomass logistics centres for the Agro-industry sector in Europe”. An Integrated Biomass Logistics Center (IBLC), is based on the introduction of new production chains into existing agro-industries by using new biomass feedstock. The AGROinLOG Project has dedicated great attention to investigate the potential of cereal chaff as a valuable resource.Chaff is the fine fraction of the thrashing residues, not usually collected. Chaff is made up of glumes, seed husks, rachis and the tinner part of the cereal stems, whole and cracked kernels, as well as weed seeds.Currently there are several mechanical solutions available on the market for chaff recovery, and others are still at prototype stage, but theyare not so common and very often unknown to the farmers.So far, the literature reportsfew cases of chaff collection with the specific purpose of weed seeds removal, but it still lacks specificexperiments on these machinesintentionally used for biomass collection.For this reason, during the Project AGROinLOG a series of large field tests were performed using an independent scientific approach with different kind of chaff harvesting technologiesin France, Sweden and Italy from 2017 to 2019.The present study collects the results of these activities with the aim to fill that gap and provide deeper understanding in the possibility to enhance the current cereal harvesting method, in order to improve the quantity of biomass collected by including the chaff. Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 62-68

Sustainable food supply has gained considerable consumer concern due to the high percentage of spoilage microorganisms. Food industries need to expand advanced technologies that can maintain the nutritive content of foods, enhance the bio-availability of bioactive compounds, provide environmental and economic sustainability, and fulfill consumers’ requirements of sensory characteristics. Heat treatment negatively affects food samples’ nutritional and sensory properties as bioactives are sensitive to high-temperature processing. The need arises for non-thermal processes to reduce food losses, and sustainable developments in preservation, nutritional security, and food safety are crucial parameters for the upcoming era. Non-thermal processes have been successfully approved because they increase food quality, reduce water utilization, decrease emissions, improve energy efficiency, assure clean labeling, and utilize by-products from waste food. These processes include pulsed electric field (PEF), sonication, high-pressure processing (HPP), cold plasma, and pulsed light. This review describes the use of HPP in various processes for sustainable food processing. The influence of this technique on microbial, physicochemical, and nutritional properties of foods for sustainable food supply is discussed. This approach also emphasizes the limitations of this emerging technique. HPP has been successfully analyzed to meet the global requirements. A limited global food source must have a balanced approach to the raw content, water, energy, and nutrient content. HPP showed positive results in reducing microbial spoilage and, at the same time, retains the nutritional value. HPP technology meets the essential requirements for sustainable and clean labeled food production. It requires limited resources to produce nutritionally suitable foods for consumers’ health.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations state that cities and human settlements need to be more inclusive, safe and resilient. In Europe cities have experienced dramatic physical, social and economic changes during the last decades while historic centres of European cities, among the most important assets of the European cultural heritage, are living paradoxes. They are defined as “a collection of beauty, icon of well-being, model of sustainability, but abandoned”. This study investigates the changes in the urban landscape of Nicosia, a particular historical centre in the Mediterranean region (Cyprus). The city centre is characterised by exceptionally well-preserved Venetian fortifications. Due to political circumstances, the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, is still divided and has been ruled by two different administrations for several decades. This study used optical multi-spectral satellite datasets processing, like the Landsat and the most recent Sentinel-2 products, to detect, identify and characterise significant morphological transformations within the walled city and around it. This paper’s central thesis promotes a more systematic use of earth observation products and derivatives in decision-making processes that regard planning, use and management of urban resources in Europe, especially in support of urban planning strategies of historic cities.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of public institutions in the pursuit of sustainable development in a case study of international relevance: Taranto’s ILVA steel plant, which is one of the biggest steel and iron centres in Europe. The case study was analysed through investigating the different aspects of sustainable development in the four phases of development of the steel plant, from public direct management to private management. The analysis, based on a series of unstructured data, was carried out by applying a triple bottom line approach and the total interpretative structuring model (TISM). Evidence shows how—in the absence of stable, coherent, strong and present public institutions, capable of reading the forces of the local and international context and of intervening with regulatory actions inspired by a planned and interiorized economic strategy—the market, left in the hands of the private entrepreneur only, is destined to fail, and the paths of multidimensional sustainable development stray away from the ambitions of modern states.