Soil survey in England, Scotland and Wales carried out during 2013 and 2014 [LTLS]

Collection of soil at a given site. At each location cores were taken from within an area approximately 100 x 100 m. A central line was established and regular points at 11 metres (m) (when 10 cores taken) or 16 m (6 cores) paced out. Individual coring sites were chosen at random distances from each of the points on the line. 10 cores were taken for semi-natural habitats, 6 (or sometimes 10) cores for agricultural fields.
Coring. Vegetation was removed, and any loose litter. We used a van Walt split corer. The Ribble cores were taken by driving the full core into the soil, then dividing the core into two, to obtain the top 20 centimetre (cm) of soil then the next 20 cm. For the other locations, the core was driven in to a depth of 15 cm, then withdrawn and emptied, then returned to the hole to sample the next 25 cm of soil. In a number of cases not all the 40 cm depth could be sampled, and in some cases slightly more than a total of 40 cm was sampled.

This dataset is included in the following collections

The Long Term Large Scale Project [LTLS]