Territorial mapping of soil type and land cover influence on ecosystem services

Abstract

The delivery of soil-based ecosystem services (ES) is of increasing importance for spatial planners. Soils are complex and heterogeneous systems, therefore synthesizing pedological expertise into decision support maps presents ongoing challenges. Our approach considers the properties of the entire pedon to assess the contribution of different soil types and land covers to ES delivery at the territorial scale.

This study adapts the Destisol decision support tool, initially developed for urban soils and therefore adapted to a high variety of pedons influenced by human activities, to a rural setting containing croplands, grasslands and forests. 86 soil profiles from the study territory are grouped into eight dominant soil types. Nine ES are evaluated based on the horizon-specific physico-chemical properties of each soil type, and mapped following a territorial 1/50,000 pedological map.

The study territory has a high potential for ES provision with a mean score of 2 +/− 0.2 (min: 1.7, max: 2.7) on a scale of 0 to 3. Soil type is shown to have a significant impact on ES supply under the same land cover. Eutric Cambisols rank highly for provisioning and regulating services, Gleysols rank poorly for water quality but highly for global climate mitigation, and shallow rocky soils rank poorly for most services except water infiltration. Mapping results and soil-type specific ES scores can be used as spatial planning tools to quantify the impact of a given scenario of land cover change on ES scores, and thereby contribute to efforts towards no net loss of soil functionality.