LUCAS Soil VRE: A Virtual Research Environment for multi-scale soil data integration and analysis in Europe
This Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is an integrated digital workspace within the LifeWatch ERIC infrastructure designed to support research in agroecology and soil carbon dynamics. It provides tools to harmonise and analyse soil-related datasets, with a focus on EU-wide LUCAS soil surveys, and similar data. The VRE is developed and validated through a case study assessing soil carbon storage potential across different land use types and soil pH gradients. By integrating heterogeneous datasets and analytical workflows, the VRE facilitates reproducible research and supports evidence-based decision-making in soil health and climate mitigation.<div><br></div><div>Background</div><div> </div><div>Soils play a fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, food production, biodiversity conservation and climate regulation. Soil organic carbon represents one of the largest terrestrial carbon pools and is strongly influenced by land use and management practices. Despite the availability of large-scale soil datasets across Europe, data fragmentation, heterogeneity in formats, and limited interoperability constrain comprehensive analyses. A harmonised and user-oriented digital infrastructure is therefore essential to enable integrated assessments of soil properties and carbon dynamics across spatial and temporal scales.</div><div><br></div><div>Introduction</div><div>
Soil carbon sequestration is central to climate change mitigation and agroecosystem resilience, with soils storing the majority of terrestrial organic carbon. Land use and soil chemical properties, particularly soil pH, are key drivers influencing soil organic carbon stocks and dynamics. Understanding how these factors interact across European landscapes requires access to harmonised, multi-temporal datasets and reproducible analytical workflows.
This VRE addresses this need by providing an interoperable environment where users can integrate soil datasets, design analytical workflows, and generate numerical and visual outputs within a unified framework. A dedicated LUCAS-Soil Processing wrapper supports data cleaning and harmonisation, including the selection of sampling points that maintain consistent land use across survey years. Then, the LUCAS-Soil ANOVA wrapper runs an ANOVA, and finally the LUCAS-Soil PCA wrapper runs a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on the provided soil dataset. The VRE thus enables systematic evaluation of soil carbon storage potential across forestlands, shrublands and grasslands at regional to EU scales.</div><div><br></div><div>Aims</div><div>
The primary aim of this VRE is to establish a robust and scalable soil health digital environment within the LifeWatch ERIC infrastructure to support research in agroecology and soil carbon dynamics. The VRE provides an integrated, user-oriented workspace for ingesting, harmonising and analysing soil-related datasets, including LUCAS and similar datasets. Its capabilities are developed and validated through a case study evaluating the carbon storage potential of soils across major land use types, testing data integration procedures, workflow design, and analytical outputs.</div><div><br></div><div>Scientific Questions
</div><div>- Can LUCAS-Topsoil and LUCAS-Core datasets be integrated to assess the long-term impact of land use on soil chemical variables across regional to EU scales?</div><div>
- How does soil carbon sequestration potential vary across soil pH gradients and different land use types (forestlands, shrublands and grasslands) within the EU?</div><div><br></div><div>Data</div><div>
The VRE integrates publicly available EU-wide LUCAS datasets provided by the European Commission (Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre). Users are required to download the datasets directly from the official sources:<br><br><div>- LUCAS Topsoil datasets: </div><div>
(1) LUCAS Topsoil 2009/2012 – Available upon request: https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/lucas-2009-topsoil-data.
</div><div> (2) LUCAS Topsoil 2018 – Available upon request: https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/lucas-2018-topsoil-data. </div><div><br></div><div>- LUCAS Core datasets: </div><div>
(3) LUCAS Core 2009 – Direct download: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/205002/208938/EU_2009_20200213.CSV. </div><div>
(4) LUCAS Core 2018 – Direct download: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/lucas/EU_2018_20200213.CSV.
</div></div>
Default
- Date ( Publication)
- 2025-10-23
- Status
- Completed
- Version
-
1.0.0
- Keywords
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Soil
- Keywords
-
LUCAS
- Keywords
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Data Analysis
- Access constraints
- License
- Use limitation
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The final license will be available soon.
- OnLine resource
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https://my.lifewatch.dev/workflow/create-workflow-from-template/lucassoil
(
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related
)
- Service Name
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LUCAS-Soil Processing
- Service Description
-
<span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-family: quot;Titillium Webquot;; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.1005px; white-space-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The LUCAS-Soil Processing wrapper cleans the LUCAS soil datasets for 2009 and 2018, and selects the points that mantain the same LU across this period.</span>
- Service Reference (id)
- Service Name
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LUCAS-Soil PCA
- Service Description
-
<span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-family: quot;Titillium Webquot;; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.1005px; white-space-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The LUCAS-Soil PCA wrapper runs a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) on the provided soil dataset </span>
- Service Reference (id)
- Service Name
-
LUCAS-Soil anova
- Service Description
-
<span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-family: quot;Titillium Webquot;; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.1005px; white-space-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The LUCAS-Soil ANOVA wrapper runs an ANOVA on the provided soil dataset </span>
metadataMetadata
- File identifier
- b2417c13-e506-43b4-b437-7f4de3287b43 XML
- Metadata language
- en
- Hierarchy level
- Virtual Research Environment
- Metadata Schema Version
-
1.0
