LILAS4SOILS D4.1 –Protocol for sampling design, soil sample preprocessing and analysis, and monitoring changes in soil organic carbon stock and soil health indicators

This document is the second version of deliverable 4.1, which supports the planning and implementation of soil sampling design across participant demo sites from five living labs in the context of LILAS4SOILS (Fostering Carbon Farming Practices through LIving LAbS in the Mediterranean & Southern EU for the healthy future of European SOILS). The target end-users of the soil sampling and data collection protocol are the living lab coordinators and team who will carry the field sampling and data management at living lab level. The deliverable also contributes to the growing body of publicly available protocols for soil sampling and methodologies for monitoring SOC changes, which can be of interest to other researchers, land managers or consultants interested in setting up carbon farming projects. The deliverable includes field and laboratory protocols to measure other soil properties beyond soil organic carbon stocks, indicators of several soil functions. The deliverable is structured by 1) providing a brief introduction to the objectives of LILAS4SOILS and some aspects of space-time monitoring of soil organic carbon and link between soil indicators and functions, followed by 2) an overview of some methods for soil spatial sampling approaches, 3) specific protocols for spatial sampling design, field sampling, and laboratory analyses within LILAS4SOILS, and 4) calculations for estimating SOC stocks and changes in SOC stocks over time. Finally, there is a short tutorial for implementing spatial sampling with the free and open software R, and examples of templates to register fieldwork notes.