Abstract
Most soil surveys and classifications are based on soil geomorphic, physical and chemical properties. The microbial properties or soil biological quality indicators (SBQIs) are ignored yet the edaphic factors used to classify soils are expected to influence soil biological characteristics. Microbial properties are an important aspect to the soil ecosystem functioning and affect soil quality and fertility. The scope of this project is to investigate whether soil classification can be used as an accurate predictor of soil function and diversity and to establish relationships between soil classification and soil biological quality indicators and critical properties which determine the hierarchical structure of each classification (e.g. pH, Ca/Al, SOM, presence of functional group, Broad Habitat etc) and their inter-dependence. The project will exploit the national soils dataset arising from Countryside Survey which includes soil chemical properties, bacterial and soil mesofauna diversity assessments and soil function measurements using both laboratory and less disturbed intact cores. These measurements are available on a subset of cores (700- 1000 cores) distributed across GB in stratified random approach embedded in Countryside Survey methodology.
United Kingdom