TUdi meta-database of long-term monitored farms and experiments to support soil degradation detection

Within the TUdi project a comprehensive list of long-term monitored farms and experiments have been created in 2022, including basic data on the agricultural system, farm typology, soil and climate,  and soil restoring strategies implemented for European TUdi partners (Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Italy and Spain) and China. These data and results, in line with the objectives of the project, will contribute to the development of Decision Support Tools available to users to detect soil degradation and provide expert advice on mitigation.

 

The TUdi database contains metadata, structured thematically, allowing insight into the data related to each experimental site (e.g. what purpose experiments are carried out or what type of data is generated in an experiment) and the implementation of queries according to the user's needs.

 

At present, the TUdi meta-database contains the general description of 34 sites (farms and long-term experiment sites), and meta-information on different treatments, management (e,g. conventional, integrated, organic), tillage practices and different experimental settings of around 140 experiments related to these sites.

 

A central element to which the other data are linked is the “site” under which the experiments are subdivided. A smaller part of the data is related to the site, while a larger part is related to the experiments. This is the structural element of the database, which cannot be modified in the future. This structure allows the database to be sufficiently flexible, both to add new sites and to add experiments or measured or calculated parameters that can be further linked to the sites.

 

A query interface is also connecting to the TUdi Database webpage. The filtering options are focusing on the “Degradation threats/challenges” and the “Experiment type/treatment” options. The performance and effectiveness of the queries will be tested when the Partners upload their available experimental data into the system.

 

According to the first query, concerning the main characteristics of the surveyed sites: 70% of the investigated sites are covered by annual crops, 7% are grasslands and the remaining 23% are orchards or olive plantations. 79% of the applied farming system is conventional, 10% organic, 4 % integrated, and the remaining 8% is a combination of them. Mineral fertilizers are used in 60% of the investigated sites, organic fertilizers in 32%, and their combination in the remaining 8%. Irrigation is applied on about one-third of the described sites (38%).

Keywords

soil degradation, long term experiments, Decision Support Tool