Abstract
Soil resources provide many important ecosystem goods and services. However, they are at risk from a variety of threats operating over a broad range of scales. Political awareness that soil is threatened by increasing pressures has been rising for several years (European Commission 2006). Indeed, the demand for soil information is increasing continuously (Richer de Forges and Arrouays 2010). Although rates of soil degradation are often slow and only detectable over long timescales, they are often irreversible. Therefore, monitoring soil quality and condition is essential in order to detect adverse changes in their status at an early stage.
“Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals”.
Aldo Leopold,
A Sand County Almanac, 1949
This chapter is a reprint from an original paper published in the journal Pedosphere. Changes from the original article include its formatting, the addition of cross-references to other chapters of this book and of one recent reference (Louis et al. 2014) and some minor textual changes.
Citation of the original paper: Arrouays, D., Marchant B. P., Saby, N. P. A., Meersmans, J., Orton, T. G., Martin, M. P., Bellamy, P. H., Lark, R. M. and Kibblewhite, M. 2012. Generic issues on broad-scale soil monitoring schemes: A review. Pedosphere. 22(4): 456–469.
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Arrouays, D. et al. (2018). Broad-Scale Soil Monitoring Schemes. In: McBratney, A., Minasny, B., Stockmann, U. (eds) Pedometrics. Progress in Soil Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63439-5_22
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