A - Papers appearing in refereed journals
Prout, J. M., Shepherd, K. D., McGrath, S. P., Kirk, G. J. D. and Haefele, S. M. 2020. What is a good level of soil organic matter? An index based on organic carbon to clay ratio. European Journal of Soil Science. pp. 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.13012
Authors | Prout, J. M., Shepherd, K. D., McGrath, S. P., Kirk, G. J. D. and Haefele, S. M. |
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Abstract | Simple measures of appropriate levels of soil organic matter are needed for soil evaluation, management and monitoring, based on readily measurable soil properties. We test an index of soil organic matter based on the soil organic carbon (SOC) to clay ratio, defined by thresholds of SOC/clay ratio for specified levels of soil structural quality. The thresholds were originally delineated for a small number of Swiss soils. We assess the index using data from the initial sampling (1978–83) of the National Soil Inventory of England and Wales, covering 3,809 sites under arable land, grassland and woodland. Land use, soil type, annual precipitation and soil pH together explained 21% of the variance in SOC/clay ratio in the dataset, with land use the most important variable. Thresholds of SOC/clay ratio of 1/8, 1/10 and 1/13 indicated the boundaries between “very good”, “good”, “moderate” and “degraded” levels of structural condition. On this scale, 38.2, 6.6 and 5.6% of arable, grassland and woodland sites, respectively, were degraded. The index gives a method to assess and monitor soil organic matter at national, regional or sub-regional scales based on two routinely measured soil properties. Given the wide range of soils and land uses across England and Wales in the dataset used to test the index, we suggest it should apply to other European soils in similar climate zones |
Keywords | Land use; Soil clay content; Soil organic carbon; Soil structure |
Year of Publication | 2020 |
Journal | European Journal of Soil Science |
Journal citation | pp. 1-11 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.13012 |
Web address (URL) | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejss.13012 |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Funder | Rothamsted Research |
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council | |
Cranfield University | |
Funder project or code | S2N - Soil to Nutrition - Work package 1 (WP1) - Optimising nutrient flows and pools in the soil-plant-biota system |
The Rothamsted Long Term Experiments [2017-2022] | |
Publisher's version | Copyright license CC BY 4.0 |
Accepted author manuscript | Copyright license CC BY 4.0 |
Supplemental file | Copyright license CC BY 4.0 |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 16 Jul 2020 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 09 Jun 2020 |
Publisher | Wiley |
ISSN | 1351-0754 |
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