Publicaties

Soil flushing and adsorption-based soil remediation are promising options for removing heavy metals in agricultural soil. However, they encounter limitations in low removal efficiency, secondary pollution potential, or the need for a purification/recovery process. Optimizing flushing solutions or the functional properties of adsorbents could fundamentally eliminate the drawbacks of these methods. Yet, their practical application remains a ...

Benthic communities in continental shelf seas are influenced by human activities, yet assessing long-term change remains impeded by the scarcity of baseline data predating the proliferation of human activities. In this study, we considered the oldest macrofauna data from Van Veen samples collected in autumn 1970–1971 in a shallow soft-sediment seabed south of the Nieuwpoort Bank in the Belgian Part of the North Sea (BPNS). Both archived data in ...

Flanders' villages such as Puurs, Nijlen and Landen are transforming. Over the course of several centuries, villages in the densely populated Flemish territory have undergone multiple iterations of population growth, urbanization waves, and, in sometimes, though rarely, degrowth. Since the turn of the century, the villages' growth has shifted from horizontal sprawling to vertical extrusion and enlarging footprints. Rather than spreading out, ...

The DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) Flanders consortium, with one of the set goals being "maturing" (i.e., optimizing the management of) and unlocking (i.e., publishing) their DNA collections, identified 1) the need for actively sharing best practices on the management of DNA collections; and 2) a need for guidance on how to bring theory into practice.During the DiSSCo Flanders project, a DNA collection working group was ...

Environmental impact assessments of marine aggregate extraction are traditionally conducted based on morphological characteristics of macrobenthos, which is time-consuming, labour-intensive and requires specific taxonomic expert knowledge. Bulk DNA metabarcoding is suggested as a promising alternative. This study compares the traditional morphological and the bulk DNA metabarcoding method to assess the impact of sand extraction activities on ...

This doctoral research project aims to enhance the knowledge on the interdependence of social relationships within and between cooperatives in the agricultural and food sector, showing how important these social relationships are - in terms of fostering a shared identity, and ultimately cooperative success. Throughout three studies, we examine in particular the diversity of different subtypes of cooperatives and how they relate to social capital ...

Sustainable crop production and the continued profitability of agriculture in Europe are increasingly perceived as two opposing goals. The desire to continue traditional farming while reducing chemical inputs and fossil energy consumption brings with it many challenges. Also, the changing climate challenges agriculture in many new ways: jeopardizing harvests, pressuring growers to adopt new management practices or changing cropping systems ...

Eutrophication by human activities is increasingly affecting ecosystem functioning and plant community composition. So far, studies mainly focus on the effects of atmospheric nitrogen deposition, surface water eutrophication or soil nutrient accumulation. Groundwater pollution of spring habitats, however, has received much less attention, although numerous papers report groundwater nutrient enrichment worldwide. This study presents a survey on ...

For successful development and adoption of technology on dairy farms, farmers need to be included in the innovation process. However, the design of agricultural technologies usually takes a top-down approach with little involvement of end-users at the early stages. Living Labs offer a methodology that involve end-users throughout the development process and emphasize the importance of understanding users' needs. Currently, exploration of dairy ...

Mangroves develop under environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures whose impact on benthic meiofauna remains poorly understood. It is unclear how meiofauna communities are structured according to local sedimentary conditions. This study was designed to characterize the community structure of meiofauna and nematodes (dominant taxa) and the associated environmental forcings in intertidal mangrove sediments from Mayotte ...