The accuracy of soil information influences assessment of soil ecosystem services in Brittany, France

Abstract

Soil is natural capital that provides several ecosystem services that contribute to human well-being and sustainable socioeconomic development. The scarcity of soil information constitutes the main shortcomings for assessing soil ecosystem services (SESs). The aim of this study was to assess effects of the accuracy of soil information on estimates of SES in agricultural systems using a modeling approach. To this end, three soil datasets that differed in accuracy were used: (i) legacy maps of soil properties, (ii) maps of disaggregated soil properties at 50 m spatial resolution and (iii) field observations (reference soil database). The supply of two regulating SESs (climate regulation and water quality regulation) and four provisioning SES (nitrogen (N)-to-plant provision, water to plant provision, plant biomass provision and groundwater recharge) over 30 years was estimated from daily outputs of 7437 simulations of the STICS soil-crop model. The main results showed that i) estimated SES supply, particularly of climate regulation and N-to-plant provision, depended on both inherent and manageable soil properties and was marginally sensitive to the accuracy of soil information, ii) using disaggregated soil maps marginally increased the accuracy of soil property predictions and thus partially compensated for the lack of soil information when assessing SESs over large areas, and iii) relationships among SESs (i.e. correlation coefficients) generally remained the same regardless of the soil dataset used. The results demonstrated that considering the accuracy of soil information in SES assessment approaches deserves more research.