National soil data in EU countries, where do we stand?

Abstract

At European scale, soil characteristics are needed to evaluate soil quality, soil health and soil‐based ecosystem services in the context of the European Green Deal. While some soil databases exist at the European scale, a much larger wealth of data is present in individual European countries, allowing a more detailed soil assessment. There is thus an urgent and crucial need to combine these data at the European scale. In the frame of a large European Joint Programme on agricultural soils launched by the European Commission, a survey was conducted in the spring of 2020, in the 24 European participating countries to assess the existing soil data sources, focusing on agricultural soils. The survey will become a contribution to the European Soil Observatory, launched in December 2020, which aims to collect metadata of soil databases related to all kind of land uses, including forest and urban soils. Based upon a comprehensive questionnaire, 170 soil databases were identified at local, regional and national scales. Soil parameters were divided into five groups: 1. main soil parameters according to the Global Soil Map specifications; 2. other soil chemical parameters; 3. other physical parameters; 4. other pedological parameters; and 5. soil biological features. A classification based on the environmental zones of Europe was used to distinguish the climatic zones. This survey shows that while most of the main pedological and chemical parameters are included in more than 70 % of the country soil databases, water content, contamination with organic pollutants and biological parameters are the least frequently reported parameters. Such differences will have consequences when developing an EU policy on soil health as proposed under the EU soil strategy for 2023 and using the data to derive soil health indicators. Many differences in the methods used in collecting, preparing, and analysing the soils were found, thus requiring harmonisation procedures and more cooperation among countries and with the EU to use the data at the European scale Additionally, choosing harmonized and useful interpretation and threshold values for EU soil indicators may be challenging due to the different methods used and the wide variety of soil land‐use and climate combinations influencing possible thresholds. The temporal scale of the soil databases reported is also extremely wide, starting from the ‘20s of the 20th century.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Providing quality-assessed and standardised soil data to support global mapping and modelling (WoSIS snapshot 2023)

“…It is not a simple task to find potential providers of "open" soil data, (Arrouays et al, 2017;Batjes, 2009;Cornu et al, 2023).…”

“…systematic and random error) information is provided with the shared soil data, for instance using the procedures described by Eurachem (Magnusson and Örnemark, 2014). Alternatively, this type of information may be collated in the context of international laboratory PTnetworks such as GLOSOLAN and WEPAL, and in the framework of the ongoing LUCAS topsoil monitoring round (Bispo et al, 2021;Cornu et al, 2023). Meanwhile, the present first estimates can already be considered when calculating the uncertainty of predictive digital soil maps and of any interpretations derived from them (e.g.…”

“…Nonetheless, a large proportion of the 800k "so-called" freely available soil profiles (see Arrouays et al, 2017), in practice, still remain "inaccessible" due to various licence constraints (e.g. Cornu et al, 2023). Soil data submitted for consideration in WoSIS come from a wide range of legacy holdings (e.g.…”

Do we speak one language on the way to sustainable soil management in Europe? A terminology check via an EU‐wide survey

“…In the EU, the transition to sustainable agriculture shall be achieved through initiatives and several largescale projects and programmes such as the European Soil Strategy for 2030 (EC, 2021), the European Green Deal (EC, 2019), the Farm to Fork Strategy (EC, 2020a), the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 (EC, 2020b), the New Common Agricultural Policy (EC, 2022) and A Soil Deal for Europe (EC, 2023). Moreover, one important step towards this goal is the European Joint Programme on Agricultural Soil Management (EJP SOIL; Cornu et al, 2023), that aims to establish an integrated, sustainable European research system and to develop and deploy a reference framework on climate-smart, sustainable agricultural soil management. A major part of the activities of EJP SOIL are directly related to the European Green Deal, additionally emphasizing the role of soil for a sustainable future (Keesstra et al, 2024).…”

Multivariate Exploratory Analysis of the Bulgarian Soil Quality Monitoring Network

“…Some of the indicators related to a decline in soil biodiversity and soil erosion are measured very rarely, whereas those related to soil compaction and the decline in soil organic matter and soil contamination are measured at almost all sites [ 2 ]. The other important drawback of soil monitoring in Member States of EU is the lack of harmonization of their national networks [ 4 ] regarding their design [ 2 , 3 ], soil sampling density [ 3 ] and method of analysis [ 5 ]. The overcoming of the above-mentioned obstacles and the expansion of the scope of monitored soil functions could be achieved via the establishment of an EU-wide monitoring network, which is the aim of the European-scale LUCAS soil survey (Land Use and Coverage Area Frame Survey) [ 2 ].…”