Wellbeing of Future Generations Indicator-13: Soil Carbon

ERAMMP, and its predecessor programme GMEP, provide data to contribute to several of the Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generation indicators (WFG). Links to some of our contributions include: 

ERAMMP Report-23: Options for a Synthetic ‘Well-being of Future Generations’ Indicator-44 (Biodiversity) 
ERAMMP Report-78: Interim Report on the Development of Indicator-44 (Status of Biological Diversity in Wales) 
ERAMMP Report-85: Development of Indicator-44: Status of Biological Diversity in Wales Final Report 
 

We also provide the data for Indicator-13 as described on Welsh Government web pages here and here and summarised below.

WFG Indicator-13 is the measured quantity of soil carbon and organic matter content of topsoil (0-15cm) measured in grams of carbon per kilogram (gC per Kg). It is measured from soil samples using the loss on ignition methodology to determine the soil carbon concentration.

Samples were taken from across all of Wales' 26 land classes, for the Countryside survey element of the ERAMMP National Field Survey. This is conducted in 300 1km sample squares and is intended to cover all of Wales. The survey does however exclude densely developed city areas and therefore it should not be considered as an inventory for brownfield sites. This survey is a direct resurvey of the nationally representative sites within the Glastir Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (GMEP) national field survey (2013-16) using identical methods.

What does the data say?

According to the latest information from the ERAMMP, the concentration of carbon and organic matter in soil is generally stable at 80.4 gC per kg in 2021-23. This is very similar to the concentrations found in the 2013-16 GMEP at 81.8 gC per Kg (summary of results here). Reported values are lower than the concentrations found in the 1998 and 2007 Countryside surveys (109 gC per Kg in both) due to an improvement in field survey coverage.

Carbon concentration status and change was assessed using repeat survey data from the GMEP and ERAMMP field survey programs. This differed to previous reporting, where change was assessed by statistically linking carbon concentration in GMEP to earlier monitoring from the Countryside Survey, which used a compatible sampling approach but contained fewer monitoring sites. The current method, made possible by ERAMMP, is considered to give a more robust and representative value for Wales.

For more information see Wellbeing of Wales on GOV.WALES