Biological indicators of soil quality over landscape spatial scales: a case study in Southern Belgium

Biological indicators are organisms or biological processes whose values give quantitative information on the capacity of a soil to function. Their fast dynamic allows to detect changes on short timescales. Five biological indicators (basal respiration, nitrogen mineralisation, microbial carbon and nitrogen, earthworm abundance and biomass, functional microbial diversity) as well as two ecophysiological indices (microbial quotient and metabolic quotient) were tested for their power to characterize the biological soil quality on a landscape level at 60 sites in two South-Belgian landscape units were investigated.
All biological indicators differed significantly between the two landscape units showing the biological indicators to be discriminatory on a landscape level. Within each landscape unit, no relationships between biological indicators were found, underlining the need to measure multiple biological indicators. The results represent the first data for a South-Belgian monitoring network of biological soil quality.