Soil quality of Finnish arable land, 1974 - 1998

The monitoring of Finnish arable land began in 1974 with the collection of soil samples from 2000 field plots throughout the cultivated area. In 1987, 1320 sites of the same fields were resampled. In 1998, 705 fields were sampled for a third time. Methods were kept unaltered since the beginning. The samples were analysed for organic C, volume weight, pH, P, K, Ca, S, Mg, Al, B, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo, Se and Zn. The methods have been described in the following publications:
Sippola, J. & Tares, T. 1978. Soluble content of mineral elements in cultivated soils. Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Supplementum 20: 11-25.
Mäkelä-Kurtto, R. & Sippola, J. 2002. Monitoring of Finnish arable land: changes in soil quality between 1987 and 1998. Agricultural and Food Science in Finland 11: 273-284.