European HYdropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI)

Weynants, Mélanie [Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy] Montanarella, Luca [Federal Agency for Water Management, Austria] Toth, Gergely [Federal Agency for Water Management, Austria] Strauss, Peter [Federal Agency for Water Management, Austria] Feichtinger, Franz [Ghent University, Belgium] Cornelis, Wim [Ghent University, Belgium] Javaux, Mathieu [UCL] et al.[show all]

There is a common need for reliable hydropedological information in Europe. In the last decades research institutes, universities and government agencies have developed local, regional and national datasets containing soil physical, chemical, hydrological and taxonomic information often combined with land use and landform data. A hydrological database for western European soils was also created in the mid-1990s. However, a comprehensive European hydropedological database, with possible additional information on chemical parameters and land use is still missing. A comprehensive joint European hydropedological inventory can serve multiple purposes, including scientific research, modelling and application of models on different geographical scales. The objective of the joint effort of the participants is to establish the European Hydropedological Data Inventory (EU-HYDI). This database holds data from European soils focusing on soil physical, chemical and hydrological properties. It also contains information on geographical location, soil classification and land use/cover at the time of sampling. It was assembled with the aim of encompassing the soil variability in Europe. It contains data from 18 countries with contributions from 29 institutions. This report presents an overview of the database, details the individual contributed datasets and explains the quality assurance and harmonization process that lead to the final database