UKCEH Soil Bank

The UKCEH Soil Bank is UKCEH’s facility for storing and analysing soil samples from nationally important surveys and experiments. It contains soils from across England, Scotland and Wales, as well as samples from key global studies, with the majority of samples linked to an array of existing soil, vegetation, habitat and climate data.

Soils are a living ecosystem involving a complex mix of minerals, decaying and stabilised organic matter and a diverse biota of microbes and microfauna. The UKCEH Soil Bank comprises both air-dried soil samples, typically used to analyse key soil properties, and frozen core samples, which can be used for DNA-based biodiversity analyses.
Soil bank
Category
Discovery collections
Capabilities
The Soil Bank houses air-dried and frozen soil samples, and is equipped with: extensive roller-racking shelving for air-dried soil samples (currently ~8000 samples); two walk-in freezer rooms, one with roller-racking, both maintained at -20 degrees (currently ~7000 frozen cores). This is coupled with laboratory facilities for processing and analyses.
Lifecycle
The Soil Bank holds samples from large-scale surveys going back to 1970s, and continues to accumulate soil samples from large-scale, long-term survey and monitoring programmes such as UKCEH Countryside Survey, Welsh Countryside Monitoring (GMEP/ERAMMP) and British Woodland Survey. It was named the UKCEH Soil Bank in 2020 alongside major reorganisation and upgrade of archive capacity.
Uniqueness
The UKCEH Soil Bank provides the only archive of frozen soils systematically sampled across Great Britain, and going back to the 1970s.
Access
Data for Soil Bank samples, including associated environmental data, are available via the UKCEH Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC). Physical soil sub-samples may be accessed on request, via a Sample Access Request form and panel approval. An online Soil Bank explorer tool is in development: contact Aidan Keith, UKCEH Lancaster.
Location
The Soil Bank is located at UKCEH Lancaster.
Funding sources
The Soil Bank is funded by NERC National Capability LTSS: UK-SCaPE programme plus UKCEH science-area funding.
Users
Soil Bank users include UKCEH scientists and other researchers interested in soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (including impacts of climate change, pollution, etc).
Scale
UK
Last updated
28 April 2022 13:29
Contact
Aidan Keith UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Lancaster uksoilbank@ceh.ac.uk
Privacy notice Terms of use Contact Accessibility