History and Progress of the ICP Forests Ringtest Programme and the Working Group QA/QC in Laborstories

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An important - and mostly little considered - factor in long-term environmental monitoring is consistently good data quality in the laboratory. After all, only actual changes or small trends in nature should be detected - not fluctuations in the quality of laboratory data. This was taken into account at a very early stage in the ICP Forests Level I and Level II surveys. In the early 1990s before the Europe-wide soil and foliage surveys on Level I started, the Expert Panels Soil and Foliar decided to carry out laboratory comparison tests prior to and in parallel with their surveys. We would like to show the progress towards the implementation of the modern ring test web interface compared to earlier versions. In 1993/94, the first Needle/Leaf Interlaboratory Comparison Test was carried out using two standard reference materials provided by the BCR (European Commission). The main purpose of this first test was to eliminate unsuitable methods. At the second Expert Panel Meeting in Ås/Norway in March 1994, it was decided to continue the ring test programme in parallel with the Level I survey in 1995/1996. The evaluation of the Level I foliage data was to be carried out by the newly established Forest Foliar Co-ordinating Centre (FFCC) at the Austrian Research Centre for Forests BFW in Vienna. The ring test provider for the next four tests was the North Rhine-Westphalia State Environment Agency (LUA). The ringtests were to be conducted every two years and run in parallel with the Level II foliage surveys. During this time, the Level I and II surveys and evaluation as well as the ring tests were funded by the EU (DG Agri). Test evaluation typically took several months, as the data were sent by post or fax to the ringtest provider, entered into the evaluation program, and a printout returned to the laboratories for re-checking. Only after the correctness of all data was confirmed, the evaluation was carried out, and the report was generated and sent to the laboratories.