Combining Soil Databases for Topsoil Organic Carbon Mapping in Europe

In this paper, SOC contents of Koiliaris (Greece), Damma Glacier (Switzerland), Lysina (Czech Republic) and Fuchsenbigl (Austria) critical zone observatories (CZOs) have been investigated by Regression-Kriging method. Different environmental predictors (elevation, slope, aspect, TWI, temperature, precipitation, geology, land-cover map, soil map) were used to predict distribution of organic carbon and producing a continuous map for the study areas. Soil characteristics and watershed dynamics of these study areas, which all take part in SoilTrEC Project as CZOs by representing degraded (Koiliaris), new (Damma Glacier), forest (Lysina) and agriculture (Fuchsenbigl) soils, are totally different from each other. As a conclusion, this study helps us to monitor soil organic carbon distributions in different conditions in the digital soil mapping perspective and also to summarize the characteristics of the four CZOs in Europe.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen