Agriculture is considered to be among the economic sectors having the greatest greenhouse gas mitigation potential, largely via soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration. However, it remains a challenge to accurately quantify SOC stock changes at regional to national scales. SOC stock changes resulting from SOC inventory systems are only available for a few countries and the trends vary widely between studies. Process-based models can provide insight in the drivers of SOC changes, but accurate input data are currently not available at these spatial scales. Here we use measurements from a soil inventory dating from the 1960s and resampled in 2006 covering the major soil types and agricultural regions in Belgium together with region-specific land use and management data and a process-based model. The largest decreases in SOC stocks occurred in poorly drained grassland soils (clays and floodplain soils), consistent with drainage improvements since 1960. Large increases in SOC in well drained grassland soils appear to be a legacy effect of widespread conversion of cropland to grassland before 1960. SOC in cropland increased only in sandy lowland soils, driven by increasing manure additions. Modeled land use and management impacts accounted for more than 70% of the variation in observed SOC changes, and no bias could be demonstrated. There was no significant effect of climate trends since 1960 on observed SOC changes. SOC monitoring networks are being established in many countries. Our results demonstrate that detailed and long-term land management data are crucial to explain the observed SOC changes for such networks.regional inventories | soil organic carbon dynamics modeling | land use history

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Mobile and potentially mobile forms of heavy metals are probably one of the most important toxic hazards in the environment. Besides pH, which is a factor influencing the mobility/availability of heavy metals to the greatest extent, the content and mainly the quality of soil organic matter play a very important role in the evaluation of heavy metal behaviour in the environment. The fraction of metals bound to organic compounds is exclusively associated with humic substances and particularly with humic acids (HA). A relationship between the parameters reflecting the actual structure of humic acids and mobile or potentially mobile fractions of heavy metals was studied in 12 soil localities representing different soil types. It can be stated on the basis of the acquired data that heavy metals tend to form complexes with soil organic matter that are different for each metal. The results suggest that copper is bound mainly in an unavailable form (significant correlations of fraction IV with HA parameters) and cadmium prefers exchangeable forms (significant correlations of fraction I with HA parameters) and is more available. It can be assumed on the basis Spearman's correlations that mobile fractions of cadmium are predominantly bound to the aliphatic part of humic substances, and copper prefers strong bonds to humic acids with a high degree of humification.

The objective of this paper is to elaborate a system of evaluation of potential risks of transport of inorganic elements, and to create a map of soil potential to immobilisation/transportation of potential risk elements.