Vulnerability of subsoils in Europe to compaction: a preliminary analysis

Identifying the vulnerability of subsoils to compaction damage is an increasingly important issue both in the planning and execution of farming operations and in planning environmental protection measures. Ideally, subsoil vulnerability to compaction should be assessed by direct measurement of soil bearing capacity but currently no direct practical tests are available. Similarly, soil mechanics principles are not suitably far enough advanced to allow extrapolation of likely compaction damage from experimental sites to situations in general. This paper, therefore, proposes a simple classification system for subsoil vulnerability to compaction based for field use on local soil and wetness data at the time of critical trafficking, and, at European level, on related soil and climatic information. Soil data are readily available ‘in Country’ or from the European Soil Database and climatic data are stored in the agrometeorological database of the MARS Project. The vulnerability to compaction is assessed using a two-stage process. First, the inherent susceptibility of the soil to compaction is estimated on the basis of the relatively stable soil properties of texture and packing density. Second, the susceptibility class is then converted into a vulnerability class through consideration of the likely soil moisture status at the time of critical loadings. For use at local level, adjustments are suggested to take account of possible differences in the support strength of the topsoil and specific subsoil structural conditions. The vulnerability classes proposed are based on profile pit observations, on a wide range of soils examined mainly in intensively farmed areas where large-scale field equipment is employed. A map of soil susceptibility to compaction in Europe has been produced, as the first stage in developing a more rigorous quantitative approach to assessing overall vulnerability than has been possible hitherto.