Temporal monitoring of soil macroinvertebrate communities at ACBB-Mons trial

The study was conducted at the long-term experiment SOERE ACBB (Systèmes d'Observation et d'Expérimentation pour la Recherche en Environnement Agrosystèmes Cycles Biogéochimiques et Biodiversité) “arable crops”, located at Estrées-Mons, Northern France (49.873 N, 3.032 E). The experiment was established on an 8 ha field, which had been cropped with annual crops for many years before the onset of the experiment. In 2010, after 2 years of complete homogenization with the same crop (wheat in 2008, then barley in 2009) and same conventional management, a six-year rotation was initiated, composed of spring pea (Pisum sativum, L.), winter wheat (Triticum aestivum, L.), rapeseed (Brassica napus, L.), spring barley (Hordeum vulgare, L.), maize (Zea mays, L.) and winter wheat. The experiment started in March 2010 (called T0) at pea sowing and six treatments were set up with 4 replicates within a randomized block design. Four of these treatments were investigated in the present study: CONV (conventional) with full-inversion ploughing, reference N fertilization rate and crop residues recycled to soil; RT (reduced tillage) i.e. same treatment but with shallow tillage; RT-RR (reduced tillage and residues removal) i.e. shallow tillage, reference N fertilization and crop residues removal; RN (reduced N fertilization) i.e. full-inversion ploughing, N fertilization rate reduced by ∼70% and crop residues recycled. In the RT-RR treatment, crop residues were removed after harvest using a hay baler after cereal crops and a silage harvester for maize. In the other treatments, crop residues were incorporated in soil using disk ploughing in the RT treatment and mouldboard ploughing in the CONV and RN treatments. Soil macroinvertebrates were monitored from 2010 to 2015 by a combination of soil hand sorting and pitfall trapping.