So far, there are only a few environmental-chemical studies that deal with the pesticide load in nature conservation areas caused by conventional farming methods. The first results of studies on the coexistence of conventional and organic farms in Brandenburg showed that, in addition to direct contamination by drift from conventionally cultivated neighboring fields, long-distance transport of pesticides also takes place.

This work package aims at a spatial representative assessment of air pollution loads within the 21 selected nature reserves as well as in the surrounding agricultural areas. The standardized technique of bark biomonitoring and effective multi-point data collection will be applied to monitor the aerial input of a broad range of pesticides (>500 PSM) and more than 55 elements, including PAHs, PCDDs, PCDFs, and dioxin-like PCBs This allows a fingerprinting of relevant pollution impacts by agriculture and other anthropogenic, industrial and natural pollution sources, e.g. N, P, and other nutrients indicating the intensity of agriculture and fertilization at the sites.

Bark biomonitoring is a standardized method to measure air pollution loads integrating over greater time spans in a comparable way. To integrate volatile as well as semi-volatile and non-volatile contaminants, yearly sub-samples will be taken at the end of each season and combined into one integrated sample. Besides direct and immediate effects, also indirect and time-delayed effects of pollution exposure to insect populations are to be regarded, too. The results of the bark biomonitoring on long-term pollution are valuable to integrate these aspects in the analysis and final assessment.

Results will provide data on the complexity of pollution loads at the sites in a comparable way, allowing an empirical data-based assessment of pollution impacts for the 21 nature reserves and the surrounding landscape and classification in the three exposure categories. Hereby the standardized method enables the assessment in relation to other sites in Germany in form of the statistical data distribution being defined in previous projects. Furthermore, data are valuable for further research such as the definition of representative pollution cocktails to be used in standardized laboratory toxicity tests.