The LUCAS topsoil database and derived information on the regional variability of cropland topsoil properties in the European Union

Abstract

Approximately 20,000 topsoil samples were collected in 25 European Union (EU) Member States (EU-27 except Bulgaria and Romania) with the aim to produce the first coherent pan-European physical and chemical topsoil database, which can serve as baseline information for an EU wide harmonized soil monitoring. The soil sampling was undertaken within the frame of the Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS), a project to monitor changes in the management and character of the land surface of the EU. Soil samples have been analysed for basic soil properties, including particle size distribution, pH, organic carbon, carbonates, NPK, cation exchange capacity (CEC) and multispectral signatures. Preliminary studies show the outstanding potential of the dataset for enhancing the knowledge base on soils in the EU. The current paper provides an introduction to the LUCAS Topsoil 2009 project and provides an example of data applicability for cropland assessment by highlighting initial results for regional and national comparisons.

Impact of cadmium levels in fertilisers on cadmium accumulation in soil and uptake by food crops

“…Representative values for soil pH (pH H 2 O and CaCl 2 ) at NCU level to be used in Integrator, are derived from the Land Use/Cover statistical Area frame Survey (LUCAS) soil database (Tóth et al, 2013). A recently developed machine learning approach (Hengl et al, 2014) was used to derive 1x1 km data using the LUCAS source data, after which the median value of all grid cells within a specific NCU was used as representative value for the NCU as a whole.…”

Impact of land use on soils microbial activity

“…It should be noted that the collection and analysis of any soil data always offers the opportunity to compare the effects of different land uses as well as to draw much deeper conclusions. Analyzing biomass production or the impact of a changing climate on the environment [SANCHEZ et al 2009;TÓTH et al 2013] or creating specialized digital maps of the developed issues [MA- KO et al 2017;MCBRATNEY et al 2003;VÅGEN et al 2016] may be an examples of such a conclusion.…”

Conversion of Soil pH 1:2.5 KCl and 1:2.5 H2O to 1:5 H2O: Conclusions for Soil Management, Environmental Monitoring, and International Soil Databases

“…Changes in soil pH are considered a sensitive indicator of human impacts (from agriculture, industry, urbanization, and others), both as acidifi cation [21][22][23] and alkalization [24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Soil pH is therefore involved in all soil-oriented studies, inventories, and databases [31][32][33][34], as well as in most environmental monitoring programs [35][36][37][38][39].…”

“…Regional or national popularity of a particular eluent and soil:eluent ratio is fi rmly rooted in the local scientifi c tradition, but it is also justifi ed by local soil properties, climate conditions, or management practices [41]. Different measurement methods lead, however, to incompatibility of data from various countries and disturb data integration in the international soil databases [33]. The most widespread eluent for soil pH measurement in Poland and also common in other countries has been KCl at a soil:solution ratio 1:2.5, used for evaluating soil fertility, liming needs, and soil contamination [42][43][44].…”

“…All legal laboratory certifi cation (accreditation) procedures based on the ISO standard and the older protocols related to the ratio 1:2.5 are no longer accepted. Finally, several European and worldwide initiatives [33], including the GlobalSoilMap [31], and the international soil classifi cation [45] have unifi ed the pH measurement (soil:distilled water at the ratio of 1:5). Therefore, there is urgent need to determine whether the archival soil pH data are fully comparable to the results of recent measurements or require recalculation.…”