Soil health cluster analysis based on national monitoring of soil indicators

Abstract

A major challenge in soil science is to monitor and understand the state and change of soils at a national scale to inform decision making and policy. To address this, there is a need to identify key parameters for soil health and function and determine how they relate to other parameters, including traditional soil surveys. Here we present a national-scale dataset of topsoil sampled as part of a wider agri-environment monitoring scheme in Wales, UK. Over 1,350 topsoils (0-15 cm) were sampled across a very wide range of habitats and a range of physical, chemical and biological soil quality indicators were measured. We Highlights • We measured soil physicochemical properties in~1,350 sites in a variety of temperate habitats

Effect of farm management on topsoil organic carbon and aggregate stability in water: A case study from Southwest England, UK

“…Overall, our study using real farm soils supports the findings of other UK experimental studies that reported predictable changes in SOC stocks with time after land‐use change in agriculture (King et al., 2004; Bhogal et al., 2009). It further reinforces the evidence that changes in SOC can be measured in agricultural soils using widely available technologies established and proven for topsoils across management types in the national soil surveys in England and Wales and Scotland, provided they are applied in an informed way with due consideration to the known sources of error (Henrys et al., 2012; Lilly et al., 2012; Seaton et al., 2020; Thomas et al., 2020). On that premise, and based on our small surveys of SOC under different management on real farms in the Tamar Valley and the South Cotswolds, we accept our overarching hypothesis that variations in SOC stocks in agricultural soils can be measured and related to land management.…”

Integrated ecological monitoring in Wales: the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme field survey

“…In terms of soil particle size, soil textural heterogeneity was found to be positively linked to bacterial richness for the first time (Seaton et al, 2020b), but fungal richness was not directly impacted by soil texture. Both bacterial and fungal community compositions were impacted by the textural composition of the soil.…”

A regional soil classification framework to improve soil health diagnosis and management

“…This classification effort is unique in presenting a novel perspective of how groups of soil properties tend to cluster at regional scale, revealing a natural differentiation of the soilscape without reference to any preconceived notions of pedogenic process and Soil Taxonomy. Other soil health research, including mapping efforts, have revealed correlations between various soil properties and land use (Seaton et al., 2020; Svoray, Hassid, Atkinson, Moebius‐Clune, & van Es, 2015), but these studies have not attempted to unravel the underlying correlation between relatively invariant properties and the land use decisions purported to relate to the soil properties themselves. In California, there is a high degree of correspondence among different crop groups cultivated and the soil health regions (Table 4), suggesting that crop and management choice is influenced to a large degree by inherent soil properties.…”