Draft:QBS Index

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QBS Index

The Index "Qualità Biologica del Suolo" (QBS, i.e., Soil Biological Quality) is one of the indexes and indicators proposed within the EU Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive (aka "Monitoring Law"). It is also one of the methods that FAO/[1] Programme GLOSOLAN posed as Operating Procedure (SOP). It is one of the methods suggested by ^[1] QBS index was an approach invented at the start of the Century (2001) by [Vittorio Parisi] of Parma University, in Italy. Born in Milan, on July 5, 1936, [Parisi] studied zoology and specialised on springtails (Collembola). In 1974, he published in Italian his book "Biologia e ecologia del suolo" (Soil Biology and Ecology), Ed. Boringhieri, Turin, an essay on the ecology and biological monitoring of soils. In 2001, he published his article in Italian "La qualità biologica del suolo. Un metodo basato sui microartropodi" on the Acta Naturalia de l’Ateneo Parmense, Volume 37 (3-4): pp. 87-106. This was the first attempt to use soil communities as bioindicators, where a indicator, or bioindicator, is an organism or biological system generally used to assess a change in environmental quality; in other words, it is a biological target which, in the presence of natural or human-induced stress, undergoes detectable changes in its natural state. Soil organisms are considered good bioindicators, as they are extremely sensitive to both natural and human-induced changes. The higher the biological quality of the soil, the greater the number of species; indeed, in the presence of degradation, soil communities appear greatly impoverished and the most species may decline or disappear altogether. The QBS method is based on the ecomorphological characteristics of soil organisms. The QBS-ar method is based on two aspects: 1) the inherent soil biodiversity is the fundamental tool for analysing biological quality using the QBS-ar method. Biological diversity is used as a ‘yardstick’; indeed, by knowing which soil organisms inhabit the soil – based on the presence and richness of the biological forms present – it is possible to use the QBS to make an assessment of the soil health; 2) the greater the degree to which microarthropods are adapted to the soil, the lower their ability to leave the soil under unfavourable conditions and seek refuge in other environments. Parisi's work, original and based on a long series of field experiences, was based on soil microarthropod communities assessment, where three soil replicates of 1 dm³ were used as soil sample to assess the micro-arthropod community of any site. Each specimen was not taxonomically identified beneath the order level, and their number accounts were not needed to assess the value in the sampling site. This represented a revolution in soil biology, where the abundant, extremely rich communities of microarthropods were too complex and consistent to be analysed in a simple and fast way. Therefore, no index on soil fauna had been proposed ever since. On the contrary, QBS-ar Index (to distinguish it from the analogous QBS-c Index, based on Collembola) posed itself as a standard that allowed fast, reliable and robust assays on the field, detecting - with the presence/absence of the taxa sampled and extracted from the soil - how was the soil community living in that site. The degree of adaptation to life in the soil, based on an easy and reliable series of characters, was accounted for each taxon or biological form present in the sample. Animals living on the soil surface were more adapted to desiccation, showed thick cuticle and long legs, antennas and phaneras, wide and functional eyes, and a vivid colouring of the body, besides long hairs, wings, or jumping structures. To these, a minimum (1) value of the so-called Eco-Morphological Index (EMI) was assigned. On the contrary, animals living deep in the soil were de-pigmented, thin or delicate in their skin, resulting in a lesser resistance to pollutants of other stressors. These, were awarded with a 20 EMI points, for their anophtalmia, aptery, and absence of any pigment. Animals with an intermediate degree of adaptation to soil were awarded with EMI values proportionate. The series of EMI values runs: 0 (absent); 1 (present, coloured, hairy, epigeous form); 2 (only for springtails, hepigeic forms, smaller that the former); 4 (only for springtails, litter forms); 5 (somehow less epigeic forms, organic litter horizons in soil); 6 (only for springtails, homogeneously coloured, concolor body, smaller jumping furca); 8 (only for springtails, less coloured specimens, with jumping furca and Post-Antennal Organs (PAO); 10 (hemiedaphic forms, larvae, intermediate adaptation to soil life); 15 (only for beetles, lesser than 2 mm in length, thin cuticle, testaceous colour, wingless but still with eyes); 20 (euedaphic forms, blind - anophtalmous, colourless, short and tiny forms). In 2003, his colleagues participated in the OECD Expert Meeting on Soil Erosion and Biodiversity in Agriculture, in Rome, and introduced two papers,.^[2] and ^[3]. In 2005, he published a refined version of the 2003 article on QBS Index as ^[4]. This paper has received more than 400 citations on scientific literature in 20 years, and has opened a series of new works on soil biology and biological monitoring of soils. The article had immediate success in the agricultural and environmental sectors in Italy, providing solutions to the long awaited quest for a biological monitoring standard. Several workshops, training courses and seminaries were organised to spread the approach and support operators, and in 2003 ARPA Piemonte was the first Italian Regional Administration that trained its ARPA researchers and technicians, and started a yearly monitoring activity throughout the Region ^[5]. Other scientific publications followed, and the method spread throughout the country, so much so that in 2008 a national workshop was organised on soil biological monitoring idexes ^[6]