The impact of land use and land use change and forestry (LULUCF) on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is important for both national GHG inventory reporting and worldwide strategy to offset GHG emissions. Within the Irish Soil Organic carbon and Land Use Mapping (SOLUM) project, Eurostat’s Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) of 2015, LUCAS soil survey of 2009, and ancillary national open data were employed in an analytical GIS framework to develop spatially integrated soils and land use dataset specific for Ireland.
In order to capture dominant Irish land uses that are not included in the EU wide LUCAS survey, the LUCAS dataset was reclassified to grassland intensification and management for IPCC reporting purposes using a formal, semi-automated, interpretation key approach. All types of land use were ascribed to a soil label using the open source Soil Information System (SIS) for Ireland and other ancillary geospatial data, thus generating LUSII, Land Use and Soil Inventory for Ireland.
Thus LUSII builds on an existing EU wide Open Data set with local knowledge and GIS analysis to create a new more applicable national dataset.