The oxidation kinetics of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in an aluminum oxide film deposited on quartz have been assessed via an in situ real-time monitoring of plasmonic evolution during thermal processing in air. A temperature-dependent exponential decay in the peak intensity of Ag NPs' absorption was revealed, which was analyzed through first-order kinetics. An activation energy of 3.28 (+/- 0.27) x 10(4) J mol(-1) was estimated in good agreement with the oxidative dissolution of similar-sized Ag NPs in liquid phase reported by Ho et al. [11]. Results are discussed in the context of mechanistic parallelisms and physico-chemical interactions in the air-atmosphere/nanocomposite-film/substrate system. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.