2 research outputs found
Shaping the development of the UKCEH UK-SCAPE Data Science Framework. Workshop report
UKCEH held an event to share progress on the development of the UK-SCAPE Data Science Framework (DSF), explore community expectations for the DSF and get feedback from the participants on whether the DSF will meet their needs. Participants were able to offer feedback through interactive voting sessions, breakout groups and a feedback form
Chronosequence methodology approaches in literature, including specific recommendations for sampling for ELUM. Report V1.1
This report presents a critical review of paired site and chronosequence approaches in the
literature and provides specific sampling recommendations and a UK sampling roadmap for
the Ecosystem Land-Use Modelling project (ELUM). It looks beyond bioenergy plantations to
uncover the best practices to determine the effects of Land Use Change (LUC) on soil
carbon stocks.
Work Package 2 (WP2) will adopt these approaches in the context of the most relevant
bioenergy transitions across the UK. Consequently, there is a need to consider the criteria
for achieving valid and robust comparisons of LUC, changes in the spatial variability of soil
carbon and other soil properties during LUC, and how these relate to UK-relevant bioenergy
transitions. The findings from this review will inform the development of a statistically robust
sampling framework to meet the assumptions of paired site and chronosequence
approaches.
Paired site and chronosequence soil sampling will now commence on the range of identified
fieldsites across the UK in line with our sampling roadmap and developed methodologies.
The review begins with a brief background to the project, including an overview of the
importance of LUC to soil carbon and the sustainability of bioenergy transitions, and the
specific objectives of Work Package 2 (Section 1).
The assumptions behind paired site and chronosequence approaches and the need to
represent key soil types and climatic zones are then discussed in the context of achieving
valid and robust LUC comparisons (Section 2). Paired site and chronosequence approaches
have been used extensively by others to examine changes in soil carbon, particularly when
considering longer-term changes.
An overview of technical issues associated with changes in the spatial variability of soil
properties across LUC transitions is presented (Section 3). Firstly, it deals with issues
associated with horizontal variability and discusses sampling strategies that may be used to
account for such differences between bioenergy land uses. Secondly, it examines issues
associated with changes in vertical strata and sampling depth, and in particular, appraises
several methods available to account for bulk density changes and their effect on soil carbon
measurements. A summary of the sampling approaches used by others is provided in two
graphs.
Section 4 considers the potential bioenergy LUC transitions that may occur in the UK and
outlines soil changes likely to be important in those transitions most relevant in the UK.
A summary of the key findings from the review and associated specific recommendations for
WP2 sampling is provided in Sections 5 and 6, respectively. The most important of these is
the need to adopt a paired site and chronosequence approach to examine transitions to
bioenergy crops. Furthermore, these approaches need to adopt a hierarchical spatial soil
sampling strategy, must include samples up to 1 m depth, and must quantify soil carbon
stocks on a cumulative and/or equivalent soil mass per unit area basis. These key findings
and recommendations are presented in the context of a pilot study which was conducted
during Q3 2011 to test different spatial sampling strategies (Appendix I).
Finally, in Appendix II we provide an overview of our year 1 sampling roadmap for Work
Package 2