| Forest Foliar Coordinating Centre - FFCC (www.ffcc.at) |  |
he concern about an increased observation of unknown forest damage in Europe lead in the 1980's to the establishment of two European programmes on the protection of forests against atmospheric pollution and other stress factor:
- The International Cooperative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests)
- the European Union Scheme on the Protection of Forests against Atmospheric Pollution.
In the framework of these two programmes a large-scale transnational monitoring network (level I) was established. On this grid, annual crown condition surveys have been carried out since 1986/87.
In addition to these observations a survey of the forest soil condition and a survey of the chemical content of needles and leaves were carried out.
In order to support the European Commission and the ICP-Forests in the coordination of this Pan-European survey the Forest Foliar Coordinating Centre (FFCC) was set up at the Austrian Federal Research Centre for Forests in 1994.
The major activities of FFCC were the storage, quality control, evaluation and presentation of the received foliar data. It is possible to select this foliage results from 17 countries (level I grid 1987-1999) from the first survey directly via internet (Database Online).
A further task is to support the work of the Expert Panel Foliage and Litterfall (storage of meeting documents, Webportal for the Expert Panel members,...).
At the 8th Foliage Expert Panel Meeting in Prague/Czech Republic (28 to 29 April 2003) the Expert Panel agreed that the interlaboratory tests will be organized and evaluated annually by FFCC. The FFCC gives further support by arranging interlaboratory tests and develop a webinterface (for needle/leaves, litterfall, ground vegetation, soil, soil solution and deposition) for this purpose.
There is a close collaboration between FFCC and the QA/QC Working Group on quality assurance and quality control in laboratories in QA/QC issues.
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| Michael Tatzber (Head of the FFCC) | Expert Panel on Foliage and Litterfall |