Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639

www.elsevier.com/locate/apgeochem

Spatial distribution of soil organic carbon concentrations in

grassland of Ireland
David McGratha, Chaosheng Zhangb,*
a
Teagasc, Johnstown Castle Research Centre, Wexford, Ireland
b
Department of Geography and Environmental Change Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

Received 30 August 2002; accepted 17 February 2003

Editorial handling by R. Fuge

Abstract
Soil organic C (SOC) concentrations in topsoil samples taken at 678 sites in the grassland of Ireland were investi-
gated using statistics and geostatistics. SOC concentrations (WalkleyBlack method) follow a lognormal distribution,
with a median and geometric mean of 5.0%, and an arithmetic mean of 5.3%. Statistically signicant (P< 0.01) posi-
tive correlation between SOC and silt-plus-clay, and negative correlation between SOC and sand were observed, with
lower correlation (P=0.17) between SOC and pH. Lower SOC concentrations were associated with higher percentages
of land in tillage. In order to obtain a robust measurement of spatial structure, spatial outliers were detected, and
subsequently eliminated, using the local Morans I index. The spatial distribution of SOC concentrations based on
kriging interpolation showed coherent spatial patterns, with the highest values in the western coastal area, and rela-
tively low values in the inland and southeastern coastal areas; soils at higher elevation were also found to contain
higher SOC concentrations. These patterns are consistent with the distribution of rainfall within the country.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction before changes can be evaluated, the baseline situation

Soils play an important role in global C cycling and
global warming. The global soil organic C (SOC) pool is
estimated at 1500 Pg (Eswaran et al., 1995; Batjes,
1996), which is roughly equivalent to the sum of the
atmospheric pool of 750 Pg and the biotic pool of 600
Pg (Schimel, 1995; Houghton, 1995; Lal, 2002).
SOC levels are known to be inuenced by a large
number of factors, many of which are mutually inter-
active. These include: parent material, soil texture, cli-
mate, soil pH, landuse, management, topography and
drainage. Manipulation of some of these factors, espe-
cially management-related ones, may be used to increase
C sequestration in soils and thus mitigate national cli-
mate-change commitments (Smith et al., 2000). However,
* Corresponding author. Fax: +353-91-525700.
E-mail addresses: dmcgrath@johnstown.teagasc.ie
(D. McGrath), chaosheng.zhang@nuigalway.ie (C. Zhang).
0883-2927/03/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0883-2927(03)00045-3
needs to be established and this is addressed here.
Statistics and geostatistics have been used to study the
relationships between SOC and these factors, and to
quantify spatial distribution patterns and changes in SOC
(e.g., Van Meirvenne et al., 1996; Saldana et al., 1998;
Chevallier et al., 2000; Frogbrook and Oliver, 2001).
Geostatistics is based on the theory of a regionalized
variable (Matheron, 1963), i.e., one which is distributed
in space with spatial coordinates. The concepts of geosta-
tistics are explained in several textbooks (e.g.: Cressie,
1993; Goovaerts, P., 1997; Clark and Harper, 2000; Web-
ster and Oliver, 2001). In the past 20 a, geostatistics has
become widely applied in soil sciences, and has provided
advanced methodologies to quantify the spatial features
of soil parameters and carry out spatial interpolation
(Burgess and Webster, 1980; Webster, 1994; Dobermann
et al., 1997; Stein et al., 1997; Zhang et al., 1998, 2000).
Ireland is a country dominated by grassland, and SOC
has primarily been investigated in these soils (Brogan,
1966; McGrath, 1980; McGrath and McCormack,
1630 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
1999). The data set from Brogan (1966) was obtained
via a national soil survey, undertaken in 1964, which
covers most parts of the Republic of Ireland. Despite
the time-lag since the data was generated, it was con-
sidered to still provide a valuable base against which
subsequent and future measurements could be eval-
uated. For this reason it has been used in this study.
2. Methods
2.1. Sampling and analysis of SOC
About 59% of the land surface of the Republic of
Ireland was recorded as being devoted to permanent pas-
ture in 1964 (CSO, 1965). Soils (010 cm depth) were sam-
pled from under permanent pasture (Brogan, 1966). A
maximum of 2 sites were selected at random from each
Fig. 1. Soil sampling locations in Ireland (n=678).
10
10 km2 sector of the national grid and sampled. Where
land cover by lake, forest, bog and mountain was less than
25%, 2 sites were selected; when greater than 75%, no
sample was taken. The 678 samples so obtained represent
approximately 50% of the total that could be accom-
modated at a frequency of 2 samples for each 10
10 km2
sector. The shortfall in the number of samples collected
can be accounted for by the low sampling-density in some
areas, e.g., in the west of the country, and in the Wicklow
south Dublin areas which, though largely mountainous,
also included upland grassland sites. However, such sites
were often peaty with SOC in excess of 18% and were
excluded under the sampling protocol.
The locations of the grassland sampling sites are
shown in Fig. 1. SOC concentrations were determined
by the Walkley-Black (Cwb) method (Metson, 1956).
Sand, silt-plus-clay contents and pH values were also
determined (Brogan, 1966).
 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
2.2. Geostatistics
Geostatistics (Matheron, 1963; Cressie, 1993; Webster
and Oliver, 2001) uses the semi-variogram to measure
the spatial variability of a regionalized variable, and
provides the input parameters for the spatial interpola-
tion method of kriging, a term introduced by Matheron
in 1960 in honour of the work of the South African
mining engineer D.G. Krige (1951). It relates the semi-
variogram, half the expected squared dierence between
paired data values z(x) and z(x+h) to the distance, lag
h, by which locations are separated:
1
 h E zx  zx h2 1 where zi is the value of the variable z at location i; z is
2
For discrete sampling sites, such as those that had
been sampled in this study, the function is written in the
form:
1 X
Nh
h zxi  zxi h2 2 1
2Nh i1
where z(xi) is the value of the variable Z at location of
xi, h is the lag, and N(h) is the number of pairs of
sample points separated by h. For irregular sampling, it
is rare for the distance between the sample pairs to be
exactly equal to h. Therefore, h is often represented by a
distance interval.
A variogram plot is obtained by calculating values of
the variogram at dierent lags. These values are then
usually tted with a theoretical model: spherical, expo-
nential, or Gaussian (See Matheron, 1963; Cressie,
1993; or Webster and Oliver, 2001 for discussion). The
models provide information about the spatial structure
as well as the input parameters for the kriging inter-
polation.
Kriging is regarded as an optimal spatial inter-
polation method, which is a type of weighted moving
average:
X
n packages. The descriptive statistical parameters were
z^x0 li zxi 3 calculated with Microsoft Excel# and SPSS# (version
i1
where z^x0 is the value to be estimated at the location
of x0; z(xi) is the known value at the sampling site xi,
and li is a weight. There are n sites within the search
neighbourhood around x0 used for the estimation, and
the magnitude of n will depend on the size of the moving
search window and user denition. Kriging diers from
other methods (such as inverse distance weighted), in
that the weight function li is no longer arbitrary, being
calculated from the parameters of the tted variogram
model under the conditions of unbiasedness and mini-
mized estimation variance for the interpolation. Thus,
kriging is regarded as a best linear unbiased estimation
(BLUE).
1631
2.3. Spatial outlier detection
Outliers, and especially spatial outliers, in the data set
can make the variogram exhibit erratic behaviour. Spa-
tial outliers are those values that are obviously dierent
from the values of their surrounding locations (Lalor
and Zhang, 2001). In this work, such outliers are iden-
tied using an index, local Morans I (Anselin, 1995;
Getis and Ord, 1996):
zi  z X
n   
Ii 2
wij zj  z 5
 j1; j6i
the average value of z with the sample number of n; zj is
the value of the variable z at all the other locations
(where j6i);  2 is the variance of variable z; and wij is a
weight, dened as the inverse of the distance dij between
locations i and j:
wij 6
dij
Local Morans I can be standardised so that its sig-
nicance level can be tested based on the normal dis-
tribution (Levine, 1999), when the distribution of the
raw data set is not too skewed. It should be noted that
when the raw data are too skewed, the normal approx-
imation of the local Morans I may fail. When the stan-
dardized value of local Morans I is higher than the
critical value of 1.96, it is concluded (P=0.05) that the
sample under test is clustered with (or similar to) the
surrounding samples; if lower than 1.96, it is con-
cluded (P=0.05) that the sample under test is sig-
nicantly dierent from the surrounding samples and is
considered to be a spatial outlier.
2.4. Data treatment with computer software
The data sets were analysed using dierent software
10.0). Maps were produced with GIS software Arc-
View# (version 3.2) and its extension of Spatial Ana-
lyst# (version 2). The geostatistics analyses were carried
out with GS+# (version 5.3) (Robertson, 2000) and
Idrisi 32# (Release 2), and the local Morans I index was
calculated with CrimeStat# (version 1.0) (Levine, 1999).
3. Descriptive statistics
3.1. Probability distribution
Histograms of SOC concentrations determined by the
WalkleyBlack method are shown in Fig. 2. That for the
raw data set has a long tail towards higher concentrations,
1632 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639

Fig. 2. Histograms of Cwb concentrations in soils of Ireland (n=678): (a) raw data; (b) logarithmically transformed data.

whereas that for the logarithmically-transformed dataset 5.0%. Due to the lognormal feature of Cwb, the geo-
can be satisfactorily modelled by a normal distribution. metric mean and median are recommended as its repre-
Table 1 shows the quantitative parameters of the sentative mean value, while the arithmetic mean
probability distribution and signicance level of the (average) should be discarded for this variable.
KolmogorovSmirnov test for conformance to a normal
distribution for the variables. The probability distribu- 3.3. Relationships between SOC and other factors
tion of Cwb is positively skewed and has a sharp peak
(positive kurtoses). The log-transformed data show Pearson (linear) correlation coecients between the 4
rather small skewnesses and kurtoses, and pass the KS variables were calculated. These are given in Table 3,
normality test at a signicance level of higher than 0.05. together with corresponding signicance levels.
On the other hand, contents of sand and silt-plus-clay
follow a normal distribution, and log-transformation
Table 2
makes the t to a normal distribution worse. pH values Basic statistic parameters of SOC concentrations and other
cannot pass either the normal or lognormal tests. How- related variables (%, except pH, n=678)
ever, its skewness and kurtosis are rather small. There-
fore, the log-transformed data sets of Cwb, and the raw Statistics Cwb Sand Silt+clay pH
data sets of sand, silt-plus-clay and pH were used for the Min 2.0 8 8 4.3
following multivariate analyses. 5% 3.0 21 36 5.1
25% 4.0 31 48 5.5
3.2. Mean values for SOC
Median 5.0 37 55 5.8
75% 6.1 44 63 6.2
Percentiles and commonly used estimators of location 95% 9.1 56 71 7.0
and spread were calculated (Table 2). The range of Cwb
varies from 2.0 to 17.8%, with the arithmetic mean of Max 17.8 87 88 7.8
5.3%. Both the geometric mean and median of Cwb are Average 5.3 37.7 54.9 5.9
GeoMean 5.0 36.1 53.7 5.8
Stdev 1.9 10.5 10.7 0.6
Table 1
Shape parameters of the probability distributions and sig-
nicance level of KolmogorovSmirnov test (KS p) (n=678)
Table 3
Statistics Cwb Sand Silt+clay pH Correlation coecients (lower-left side) and their signicance
levels (upper-right side) (n=678)
Raw data Skewness 1.66 0.32 0.28 0.70
Kurtosis 4.77 0.65 0.60 0.42 LnCwb Sand Silt+clay pH
KS p 0.00 0.17 0.73 0.00
LnCwb 0.00 0.00 0.17
Log-transformed Skewness 0.36 0.82 1.72 0.43 Sand 0.43 0.00 0.00
data Kurtosis 0.42 1.76 8.92 0.08 Silt+clay 0.22 0.91 0.00
KS p 0.11 0.01 0.01 0.00 pH 0.05 0.14 0.13
 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
A positive correlation between SOC and silt-plus-clay
and negative correlation between SOC and sand were
also conrmed. It should be mentioned that the two
variables of sand and silt-plus-clay sum up to almost
100%, which forms a constant sum proportion. In this
case, the strong negative correlation between the two
variables is expected. The correlation between SOC and
pH is less pronounced. The causative relationship
between SOC and pH is complex, with SOC being a
progenitor of carbonic acid which then contributes to
inhibiting organic matter degradation by soil micro-
organisms.
To reveal the relationship between SOC concen-
trations and elevation of the sampling sites, the GIS
software ArcView# was used to assign the samples to 4
elevation groups: 0 ( < 25), 50 (2574), 100 (75124), and
150 (> 124) m, based on which contour line the sampling
location is close to. The box-plot (Fig. 3) shows the dif-
ference of SOC concentrations among these groups.
In each box-plot, the lower boundary of the box
shows the 25th percentile, and the upper boundary
shows the 75th percentile. The whiskers are lines that
extend from the box to the highest and lowest values,
excluding outliers (here dened as the values that are out-
side 1.5 box lengths from the upper and lower edges of the
box). The line across the box indicates the median. This
plot shows that the SOC concentrations in the 0 (<24) m
and 50 (2574) m elevation groups are the lowest, and
those in the 150 (> 124) m group are slightly higher.
To better quantify the dierences among the elevation
groups, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied. The
results show that the observed dierences are signicant
at the level of 0.05. Further analysis of the post hoc test
with Duncans test (Duncan, 1955) was carried out, and
the results are shown in Table 4. The Kolmogorov
Smirnov test has shown that all the groups have passed
the test for normality (P> 0.05). The Levene test has
Fig. 3. Box-plot of SOC in dierent elevation groups (n=50,
171, 301, 156 respectively).
1633
Table 4
Results of post hoc tests in ANOVA with Duncans method
(with mean values of LnCwb in each elevation group)
Elevation group (m) n S.D. Subset 1 Subset 2
0 50 0.365 1.557
50 171 0.306 1.559
100 301 0.340 1.622 1.622
150 156 0.304 1.675
Signicance level 0.158 0.221
shown that the variances between the groups of the data
set are homogenous at the signicance level of 0.46, and
thus Duncans test can be applied. The 4 groups of
samples can be separated into 2 subsets. The rst subset
contains samples within the elevation groups of 0, 50,
and 100 m; while the second subset consists of the 100
and 150 m elevation groups. The dierences within
either subset are not statistically signicant, at the 0.05
level, with signicance levels of 0.158 and 0.221, respec-
tively. However, the dierence between the subsets is
signicant at the level of 0.008 (with an F-value of
4.013). It can be concluded that statistically samples at
the elevation group of 150 m have the highest SOC
concentrations in this study. In explanation, it can be
assumed that high elevation tends to result in increased
precipitation and decreased temperature; both of these
environmental factors tend to favour accumulation of
humus (Jenny, 1980), and thus of SOC.
Agricultural activities, especially tillage, play an
important role on SOC concentrations. The proportion
of agricultural land in tillage for each county in Ireland
in 1964 was calculated based on data from the report of
Central Statistics Oce, Ireland (CSO, 1965). The aver-
age values of Cwb in each county were also calculated. A
scatter plot of mean Cwb as a proportion of land in til-
lage shows a decreasing trend (Fig. 4). The correlation
coecient is 0.632, which is highly signicant
(P< 0.001).
Fig. 4. Average SOC concentrations in each county as a func-
tion of proportion of agricultural land in tillage (n=27).
1634 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639

Fig. 5. SOC (Cwb) distribution in soils of Ireland and location of spatial outliers.

4. Spatial Distribution of SOC

4.1. Spatial symbol map and spatial outliers of SOC

A point-symbol map of SOC concentrations in grass-

land of Ireland is shown in Fig. 5.
Some possible spatial patterns are identiable on this
map. Western Ireland and the north-eastern part have
relatively high SOC concentrations, while the south-
eastern part and north-western part generally have
lower concentrations of SOC. However, it can be seen
that some locations with high values have points with
low values nearby; in some areas of low values, there are
also some points with high values. This suggests the
presence of spatial outliers which need to be eliminated
prior to estimation of the spatial variogram. Fig. 6. Variogram surface of LnCwb.
 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639 1635

Fig. 7. Isotropic variogram model of LnCwb: (a) spatial outliers excluded (n=639, exponential model: C0=0.05; C0+C=0.11; a=40
km); (b) all samples (n=678).

As described above, in order to avoid introducing
bias, spatial outliers were detected using standardized
local Morans I (Levine, 1999); Samples with values
lower than 1.96 were dened as spatial outliers. The
calculation was based on the log-transformed Cwb data
set. Altogether, 39 spatial outliers were detected (Fig. 5).
In the south-eastern part of the region, there are some
outliers with abnormally higher values than the majority
of the samples. Some outliers with abnormally lower
values than the majority of the samples occur in the
western part, and two samples in the north-eastern
part.
In order to obtain a robust variogram, the spatial
outliers were excluded in the variogram calculation.
However, all values, including the detected spatial out-
liers, were included in the kriging calculation,

Fig. 8. Cross validation results showing the dierences between the estimated and actual values.
1636 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
4.2. Spatial structure of SOC
The variogram surface of LnCwb is illustrated in
Fig. 6.
It can be seen that the variogram is broadly isotropic,
with the lowest values located in the centre, and it
increases in all the directions with the increase of lag.
Therefore, the experimental isotropic variogram for
LnCwb was calculated (Fig. 7). For comparison, the
variogram for all samples (spatial outliers included) is
also shown in Fig. 7.
The experimental variogram has been tted with an
exponential model. There is a signicant nugget eect of
0.05, which accounts for 45% of the total sill of 0.11.
This shows that the small-scale variances are quite
strong. In this study, only grassland soils had been
sampled. It is expected that the small-scale variances
would be even stronger if all types of soils were sampled.
Fig. 9. Spatial distribution map of SOC concentrations in grassland of Ireland.
The range of 40 km in the model implies that the large-
scale spatial autocorrelation may extend to the eective
range of 120 km. Hence the present sampling density is
sucient to reveal general patterns but short-range
variations can only be disclosed by sampling at a higher
spatial density. The optimum sampling-scale for SOC in
Irish soils is not known but it will be a compromise
between what is most eective and what is feasible.
Clearly the mean sampling-interval used here, ca. 7 km,
is too great. Van Meirvenne et al. (1996) found in an
investigation in Belgium that most of the change occur-
red within about 4 km, so that the optimum sampling
scale is almost certainly less than this.
When compared with the variogram for all samples,
signicant improvement of the variogram is observed
for the samples with the spatial outliers excluded. The
variogram for all samples is close to a nugget eect,
which is mainly attributed to these spatial outliers.
 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
4.3. Spatial distribution of SOC concentrations
The parameters of the exponential model were used
for kriging to produce the spatial distribution map of
SOC concentrations in soils of Ireland. A search region
of 32 nearest-neighbours was applied in order to oset
the relatively high nugget eect. To test the eectiveness
of the model, cross validation (i.e., back-calculation of
the observed values) was carried out with all the samples
including spatial outliers. The results are shown in
Fig. 8. It can be seen that the under-estimated and over-
estimated points are irregularly distributed over the
study area. The spatial outliers detected using local
Morans I in the eastern part tend to be under-esti-
mated, while those in the western and northeast parts are
over-estimated, which reconrms that they are outliers.
For the log-transformed data, the median of the relative
absolute errors (the dierence between the estimated and
Fig. 10. Hillshade map showing topography of Ireland.
1637
actual values regardless of sign) of LnCwb is 11.9%, and
the average of relative absolute errors is 15.6%. When
the data are back-transformed to Cwb, the median and
average value of the relative absolute errors are 18.8 and
24.2% respectively.
For the spatial interpolation, a cell size of 500
500 m
was chosen to divide the study area into a grid system
containing 707 rows and 625 columns. Ordinary kriging
was used with a block size of 2
2 and a search neigh-
bourhood of 32 nearest-neighbours. The interpolated
values were then back transformed according lognormal
kriging. Fig. 9 shows the nal result of this spatial
interpolation process.
The data range of the interpolated values is from 3.3
to 8.2% Cwb. This is narrower than that of the raw data
set (Table 2), but is to be expected because of the
smoothing eect of the spatial interpolation. However,
this smoothing eect helps to identify the general spatial
1638 D. McGrath, C. Zhang / Applied Geochemistry 18 (2003) 16291639
patterns and reduces both the local variations and the
negative eect of random errors. The spatial distri-
bution of SOC is generally consistent with elevation
(Fig. 10) and precipitation (Rohan, 1975; Collins and
Cummins, 1996) in Ireland.
The highest SOC concentrations are located in the
western coastal area, where elevation and precipitation are
the highest. In the northern part, there is a relatively high-
concentration area between counties Cavan, Roscommon,
Leitrim and Monaghan. On the eastern side, a small
area of high concentrations is located in counties Dublin
and Wicklow. These areas also have relatively high ele-
vation and precipitation. On the other hand, SOC con-
centrations are rather low in the southeastern part,
which is consistent with the relatively low precipitation.
Even though the elevation is not low, the southeastern
part of Ireland is a rain-shadow area caused by the
mountains on the west side. Another area with
obviously low values is located in east Galway, south
Roscommon, west Longford and Westmeath. This area
has low precipitation and low elevation. In west Kerry,
the SOC concentration is not as high as expected, which
may be related to the low sampling density in this area.
Finally, western Ireland generally has higher SOC con-
centrations than eastern Ireland. More detailed quanti-
tative comparison between SOC and precipitation and
elevation may be carried out when more detailed sam-
pling is available in the future.
5. Conclusions
The SOC concentration (measured by the Walkley
Black method) in grassland of Ireland follows a log-
normal distribution, with a median value of 5.0%,
arithmetic mean of 5.3%, and geometric mean of 5.0%.
Statistically signicant positive correlation exists
between SOC and silt-plus-clay; negative correlation
between SOC and sand, and lower correlation between
SOC and pH were found. Low SOC concentrations are
consistent with higher proportions of land in tillage. The
local Morans I index has been eective in this study in
detecting spatial outliers. The spatial distribution of
SOC concentrations in Ireland show a broad regional
pattern, with the highest values in the west coastal areas,
and relatively low values in the inland and south-eastern
coastal areas. This is generally consistent with the spa-
tial distribution of precipitation and elevation in the
country.
Acknowledgements
This study was sponsored by the Research Develop-
ment Fund of TEAGASC (Agriculture and Food
Development Authority, Ireland) and the Millennium
Research Fund 2002 of National University of Ireland,
Galway. The raw data sets were provided by TEA-
GASC. Helpful discussions with Prof. Mcheal O Cin-
neide are acknowledged. The authors are grateful to Dr.
Richard Howarth, Dr. Nils Gustavsson, and an anon-
ymous reviewer for their helpful comments and sugges-
tions to improve this paper.
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