1 Stocks of biomass / C soil organic matter Expert meeting on land use and Ecosystem accounting 18./

2 outline Why organic matter The accounting perspective What we have and what we need The soil perspective

3 Why organic matter

4 Climate change debate Soil as a sink or source Biomass as an indication for carbon sequestration For environment relevant to reduce greenhouse gases For economic sector relevant for emission trading

5 The accounting perspective Stocks Stock change Flows Ecosystem functions Ecosystem goods and services Assessment of human activities which influence the provided goods and services Political process

6 What we have and what we need Soil map in scale 1:1mio Representative profiles for the main soil types of Europe Properties (without time dimension) Accounting for GHG reporting Stocks and stock changes And …….

7 The soil perspective / specifics Soil influence many processes As the basic medium often defined as contributor to other processes Processes slower than in other media (e.g. flow velocity) => long time memory Soil science has a history from agriculture Soil surveys in the past are not targeted to actual questions (e.g. sampling)

8 Soil ? Legend unit ST A 70% ST B 20 % ST C 10% Horizon description Organic matter content from 8-12%

9 Soil ?

10 Soil ? Soil sampling protocol to certify the change of organic carbon stock in mineral soils, JRC 2005

11 Soil, what we have Carbon losses from all soils across England and Wales Pat H. Bellamy, Peter Loveland et all. (nature, 2005)

12 Soil, what we have Carbon losses from all soils across England and Wales Pat H. Bellamy, Peter Loveland et all. (nature, 2005)

13 Soil, what we have Europes terrestrial biosphere absorbs % of European anthropogenic CO2 emissions Janssens, Ivan et al. 2003: science 2003

14 Soil, what we have Land use, land-use change, and forestry Greenhouse Gas Inventory, Germany

15 Soil, what we need Maps: soil type, soil properties, soil functions Observation of concrete profiles Problems of re-sampling after time Representativness of samples Potentials (e.g. erodability) vs. stocks (organic matter)

16 Perspective / open points Clear definition of subsystems (medium and processes) Link between ecosystem as individuals and European picture Criteria for back linking of case studies to European picture Additional to using what we have we need intensive dialogue what we need in advance of research project Do we account the same for ecosystems and land use? New model or another round with better input