The Map of Organic Carbon Content In Topsoils In Europe: Version 1.2

The European Union Joint Research Center’s Soil Portal makes available a map of organic carbon content (%) in the surface horizon of soils in Europe circa 1990. The data are in ESRI GRID format and are available as an ASCII raster file or in native ESRI GRID format. In addition, an interactive application allows the user to navigate in the Organic Carbon data with OCTOP Map Server and print their own customized map. A Soil Profile Database for Europe SPADE (v 1), containing data on organic carbon in the topsoil (0–30cm) for important soil types, is also available as part of this database. To produce the map, a pedotransfer rule for calculating the OC contents of topsoils in Europe was applied to a 1km soil data set derived from the European Soil Database, an extended CORINE land cover data set, a digital elevation model (DEM), and mean annual temperature data. The resulting map and a 1km digital data set covering the whole of Europe can be used for defining the baseline status of organic carbon in European topsoils. The results from comparing the OC values portrayed on the map with measured values from >12,000 points on the ground in the UK (England and Wales) and Italy are very encouraging and give a coefficient of determination of >0.9. The samples for these ground measurements were collected mostly during 1971-1990. For more information, see: Jones, R.J.A., Hiederer, R., Rusco, E., Loveland, P.J. and Montanarella, L. 2004. The map of organic carbon in topsoils in Europe, Version 1.2, September 2003: Explanation of Special Publication Ispra 2004 No.72 (S.P.I.04.72). European Soil Bureau Research Report No.17, EUR 21209 EN, 26pp. and 1 map in ISO B1 format. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg. Also see Jones, R.J.A, R. Hiederer, E. Rusco, P.J. Loveland and L. Montanarella. 2005. Estimating organic carbon in the soils of Europe for policy support. European Journal of Soil Science, 56: 655-671.