Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

In this project the Swedish Forest Soil Inventory (SFSI) and the LUCAS Soil Survey were analysed in order to compare them regarding their methodologies and results for selected soil properties (OC, N, pH, soil texture) and assess their compliance with the soil monitoring system requirements laid down in the EU's upcoming Soil Monitoring Law. To achieve this, the two soil inventories were compared to a stratified random sampling scheme which was generated using an approach recommended by the EU's Joint Research Centre, to design and optimize a soil monitoring system in line with the new directive. It was shown that the SFSI has a good spatial coverage of Swedish Forest Soils that may fulfil the requirements, except for certain soil properties such as soil texture which will need to be measured in more detail. The LUCAS Soil Survey's sampling methodology is not well suited to the characteristics of forest soils due to only considering the upper 20 cm of the mineral soil and ignoring humus layers. But it could serve as a supplementary data source to the SFSI in reporting under the Soil Monitoring Law for soil properties where the SFSI data is not at the required level.
Variance in OC and N was found to be very high in both the SFSI and LUCAS, with coefficients of variation around 1.0. It was shown that dividing the country in soil units based on administrative borders and soil regions as proposed in the Soil Monitoring Law does not result in less variability in the data. Instead, a considerable reduction in variance could be achieved by analysing soils with and without peat layer separately.