A new framework to estimate soil organic carbon targets in European croplands
Résumé
Adopting land management practices that increase the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands is widely promoted as a win-win strategy to preserve soil health and mitigate climate change. In this context, the definition of reference SOC content values is needed to provide reliable targets to farmers, policymakers, and stakeholders. In this study, we used the LUCAS dataset to compare different methods for evaluating reference SOC content values in European croplands soils. Methods gave generally consistent estimates although being built on very different assumptions. In the absence of an objective criterion to establish which approach is the most suitable to determine SOC reference values, we propose an ensemble modelling approach that consists in extracting the estimates using different relevant methods and retaining the median value among them. Interestingly, this approach led us to select values from the different approaches in a balanced way. The use of additional methods in the ensemble modelling approach may further refine our framework designed for the estimation of SOC reference values for croplands.