Soils are key components of our ecosystems and provide 95%\uffe2\uff80\uff9399% of our food. This importance is reflected by an increase in participatory citizen science projects on soils. Citizen science is a participatory research method that actively involves and engages the public in scientific enquiry to generate new knowledge or understanding. Here, we review past and current citizen science projects on agricultural soils across Europe. We conducted a web\uffe2\uff80\uff90based survey and described 24 reviewed European citizen science projects in the light of the 10 principles of citizen science and identified success factors for citizen science. Over 66% of the projects generated soil biodiversity data; 54% and 42% of the projects generated data on vegetation cover and soil organic carbon, respectively. Our findings show that soil citizen science projects aligned with the 10 principles of citizen science offer an unexploited resource for European soil health research. We conclude that promoting co\uffe2\uff80\uff90creation, fostering knowledge\uffe2\uff80\uff90sharing networks and enabling long\uffe2\uff80\uff90term communication and commitment with citizens are success factors for further development of citizen science on soils.Abstract
The term
Organic carbon sequestration and its quality in soil is a crucial aspect in maintaining the productivity of the soil and the whole ecosystem. The study examined the changes in soil organic carbon (SOC), its sequestration potential, and the mean effect size under various long-term organic matter inputs in acid soil (Dystric Retisol). Cattle manure (CM 60 t ha\u22121) and various plant residues were used for the fertilization of acid and limed soil. The following treatments were included in the experimental design: (1) natural Retisol; (2) natural Retisol + CM; (3) natural Retisol + various plant residues; (4) calcium carbonate (CaCO3) at a 1.0 rate every five years); (5) CaCO3 + CM; (6) CaCO3 + various plant residues. The data demonstrated that the treatments including the use of organic material (CM and various plant residues) showed a greater SOC content accumulation with a storage of up to 0.2\u20130.6% more carbon in the topsoil. Alternative organic fertilizers had a detrimental impact when applied to unlimed soil, with a loss of 0.59 g kg\u22121 C per year. All the fertilization treatments significantly increased the SOC level with the mean effect size of 0.02\u20130.28, and the increase varied from 1.89% to 32.89%. This result suggested that liming, together with organic fertilizers, proved to be a relatively efficient approach to improving the soil\u2019s health and quality.
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Where\n present, they are considered to be major contributors and regulators of\n decomposition, with consumption rates often greater than other termite\n groups. This study sought to understand the relative roles of termite\n distribution (specifically the presence or absence of fungus-growing\n termites) and climatic variables (mean annual temperature, mean annual\n precipitation and mean annual aridity) on global patterns in deadwood\n decay. To answer this question, we added new salient data to an existing\n dataset on global wood decay by Zanne et al. (2022) available\n at\u00a0https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19920416.v1. We filtered the data\n to only include sites where termites were present and thus analysed a\n dataset containing 102 sites across 16 countries. We found that\n termite-driven decay of deadwood increased with aridity but was higher in\n sites with fungus-growing termites than sites without fungus-growing\n termites. Our results also showed that the relative role of fungus-growing\n termites increased with aridity, as rates of wood-discovery by termites\n increased with aridity but only in sites where fungus-growing termites\n were present. Our findings indicate that the inclusion of biogeographical\n differences in termite distribution could potentially alter global\n estimates of deadwood turnover. This repository contains new datasets on\n termite-driven deadwood decay of Pinus radiata wood blocks and code used\n for all data analyses and production of figures.", "formats": [{"name": "WWW:LINK"}, {"name": "canonical"}], "keywords": ["Project", "EJPSoil"], "contacts": [{"name": "Law, Stephanie J.", "organization": "Natural History Museum", "position": null, "roles": ["Law-Stephanie-J."], "phones": [{"value": null}], "emails": [{"value": null}], "addresses": [{"deliveryPoint": [null], "city": null, "administrativeArea": null, "postalCode": null, "country": null}], "links": [{"href": {"url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8362-4702", "protocol": null, "protocol_url": "", "name": null, "name_url": "", "description": null, "description_url": "", "applicationprofile": null, "applicationprofile_url": "", "function": null}}]}, {"name": "Flores-Moreno, Habacuc", "organization": "CSIRO Health and Biosecurity", "position": null, "roles": ["Flores-Moreno-Habacuc"], "phones": [{"value": 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"geoscientificInformation"}], "scheme": "https://standards.iso.org/iso/19139/resources/gmxCodelists.xml#MD_TopicCategoryCode"}, {"concepts": [{"id": "European"}], "scheme": "https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/metadata-codelist/SpatialScope"}, {"concepts": [{"id": "EJPSoil"}], "scheme": "Source"}], "license": "cc-by-4.0", "updated": "2025-01-14", "type": "Dataset", "language": "en", "externalIds": [{"value": "http://doi.org/10.5194/soil-9-117-2023"}], "title": "Supplementary material to: Quality Assessment of Meta-Analyses on Soil Organic Carbon", "description": "Table S1: List of resources for assessing the quality of, reporting or creating meta-analyses in several disciplines Table S2: 31 soil organic carbon meta-analyses and their individual scores per (sub)-criterium Table S3: Literature gathering Table S4: Information on screening process Table S5: Results for all meta-analyses per group and (sub)-criterium Table S6: Quick quality assessment of meta-analyses in IPCC report with the help of \"cut-off\" criteria Table S7: Results for criteria 1-5 and 9-17 from meta-analyses that passed and did not pass the \"cut-off\" criteria Table S8: Template for quality assessment