Pan-European Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) stock of agricultural soils (data available)
The future EU policy in agriculture will utilized SOC as indicator, both as a main parameter of soil quality and as a strategy to offset CO2 emission by C sequestration. However a consistent picture of agricultural SOC stock is missing as well as tools to orient the future policymaker decisions. We estimated a current top SOC stock of 17.63 Gt in EU agricultural soils, by an unprecedented model application running about 164,000 combination of climate, soil and land use/management.
The Data [Soil organic stock (t C ha-1) in the layer 0-30 cm at 2010 and hectares under agricultural land use] are available as Shape Files.
A detailed explanation of the methodology and the platform of simulation developed could be found in: Lugato E., Panagos P., Bampa, F., Jones A., Montanarella L. (2013). A new baseline of organic carbon stock in European agricultural soils using a modelling approach. Global change biology. In Press
See: http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/Themes/SOC/CAPRESE/
Contact : Panos PANAGOS, E-mail: panos.panagos(a)jrc.ec.europa.eu