Harmonization of soil methods and data

Allan Lilly and Helaina Black

What do we mean by harmonization?

Harmonize –

‘an interweaving of different accounts into a single narrative’

‘To bring into agreement’

Interoperability –

‘ability of a system to work with or use the parts or equipment of another system’

‘Able to operate in conjunction’

Why do we need to bring data together?

Increasing requirements for cross-border assessments

Environmental quality reporting (eg changes in C stocks)

Assessing policy effectiveness and implications

Continental or global scale modelling

Use of legacy data in integrated datasets

Develop common protocols for future data collection

Changes in methodologies over time

Monitoring

Trends in soil properties

Current UK methods as used in policy – Organic C

Organisation Method1 Method2 Method3

NSI England and Wales

Dichromate digest LoI @850⁰ >20% OC

Countryside Survey

LoI @ 375⁰ & 550⁰ CHN analyser

NSIS Scotland

LoI (800-900⁰)

CHN analyser (<150μm) *

Northern. Ireland NSI

CHN analyser

BioSoil CHN analyser

Environment Agency

CHN analyser

ISO Oxidation @ 900⁰ – CO2 measured

1978 2000 2007

Countryside Survey

LoI @ 375⁰ LoI @ 375⁰& 550⁰ CHN analyser

CHN analyser LoI @ 375⁰ & 550⁰

Current UK methods as used in policy – pH in water

Organisation Vol/wt soil Vol water Time (min) Method

NSI England and Wales

10ml air dried 25ml 15 PH electrode

Countryside Survey

10g field moist and air dried

25 ml 30 PH electrode

NSIS Scotland

20ml air dried 50ml 120 PH electrode

Northern. Ireland NSI

15g 45ml 240 Skalar SP10 robotic analyser

BioSoil 5ml air dried 25ml 125 ?

Environment Agency

20g air dried 50ml 60 ?

ISO 5ml air dried 25 >120 <240 ?

National Soil Inventory of Scotland resampling – JHI

y = 0.896x + 0.1607 R² = 0.9883

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Rean

alys

ed a

rchi

val m

ater

ial

Original 1978/88

Organic Carbon

11.5 % deviation from original values elemental analyser - machine difference

Implications for soil monitoring

Reference standards … not standard practise - allows harmonization

reference standard

δ13C values

Topsoil sampling – three different UK surveys SOC% similar for same soil type in the same region

Sampling methods …

BROWN SOILS ONLY NSI E&W (bulked auger) RSSS (bulked auger) Countryside Survey (core) 0-15cm Defra 2001. Bradley et al

Comparing sampling methods –profile vs fixed depth

15 cm Scotland has all 3 methods - profile, core & auger

Cross-border harmonization based on legacy data– Hydrology of soil Types

• Covers 4 territories and 3 soil survey organisation • Based on soil morphology incl gleyic and stagnic properties Built from basic soil properties (colour, texture, structure, PTR)

Single, unified method to predict river flows for water managers.

HYPRES EU cross-border harmonization Soil hydrological measurements by:

Hanging water column (few points at fixed pressure heads)

Evaporation method (many points at various/almost continuous pressure heads n=900)

Data standardized by:

Parameterising the K/h and θ/h relationships using MVG

Generating new K/h and θ/h relationships at fixed points

4000 soil horizons across Europe/125000 data pairs

Processing power vastly increased

Less time demanding now

Available without georeferences - IPR

Theta and K values for 14 fixed ‘h’ values using the optimized MVG parameters

localngr horizon theta res. 0.01003346980 3498612 C theta sat. 0.3921

alpha 0.0249n 1.1689m 0.1445l -0.7437K sat 10.7550

pressure head theta k0 0.392 1.08E+01

10 0.382 5.80E-0120 0.372 2.80E-0150 0.349 7.40E-02

100 0.324 2.20E-02200 0.296 5.60E-03250 0.286 3.50E-03500 0.258 8.00E-04

1000 0.231 1.80E-042000 0.207 3.90E-055000 0.179 5.20E-06

10000 0.160 1.10E-0615000 0.151 4.70E-0716000 0.149 4.10E-07

One of the most commonly used PTFs

Geodata Services Soil/INSPIRE

EU initiative (GS Soil) to allow member states to easily

share spatial data

INSPIRE compliance stresses ‘interoperability’ rather than

harmonization

Methods do not need be the same

Data doesn’t need to be transferred

Soil science community is working towards developing

interoperability in both polygon and profile data

Summary Interoperability rather than harmonization?

Legacy data owned and managed by data collectors

We can reuse and revitalise legacy data

Going forward

New data requires reference standards

new data requires standardized, reproducible methods

But which