Various stakeholders, such as modelers, policy makers, farmers, and environmental regulators need reliable soil bulk density and coarse fragment content data. These two soil parameters are necessary to calculate soil carbon and nutrients stocks, to estimate water availability for plants, or to assess soil compaction. However, measuring these two parameters is labor intensive and time consuming. Therefore, many agricultural and environmental studies often miss these two soil parameters. Here, we provide four datasets, one with bulk density and coarse fragment contents of topsoil and subsoil, measured in two campaigns of the French Soil Quality Monitoring Network (RMQS for its acronym in French), a second one with the average values for bulk density and coarse fragments of the two campaigns at 0-30 cm and 30-50 cm. The third and the fourth ones are the raw data needed to calculate the two first datasets divided by campaign. In addition, the R script for calculating the depth-weighted values per soil layer is provided.

During the last 10 years, several attempts to map soil attributes at the scale of mainland France have been realised. We exemplify them by seven major outputs: maps of organic C stocks, trace elements (TE), microbial density and diversity, soil thickness, available water capacity (AWC), extractable P, and changes in soil pH. We first briefly describe the data and the methods used to produce these maps and summarise their main results. We then focus on their impacts on various categories of the public, i.e. the general public and citizens; farmers; private companies; non-governmental organisations; agricultural development organisations, stakeholders, and national agencies; French governmental bodies; and international organisations. We also analyse the demands that came to the French National Soil Information Centre from 2008 to 2018 and the impact that our activities had in various media. Soil organic C had the largest impact in nearly all categories of end-users, which may be linked to the recent '4 per 1000' initiative launched by the French governmentduring the COP21 and to the fact that farmers are interested in increasing the organic matter content of their soil for increasing the fertility. TE obtained high scores, which may be related to citizens' care about health and to the fact that governmental bodies and national agencies have a major interest in site contamination assessments. The soil P content, pH, and AWC exhibited major impacts on the agricultural sector. Maps of the soil P content and pH were used as geomarketing tools by private companies selling fertilisers and soil amendments, whereas the AWC was already incorporated into decision-making aid tools for irrigation management developed by development organisations for farmers. Microbial diversity generated collaborations with a large network of farmers and had a large media impact. Nevertheless, the visibility of soil information to the general public should be increased. This can be done by using new multimedia and interactive tools. Overall, these selected examples of digital soil mapping of soil attributes at the national scale in France clearly indicate that the soil attributes have substantial impact on various categories of end-users, such as farmers, professional organisations, stakeholders, and policymakers at different levels of decision-making, among others. However, the impacts on the general public and citizens are more difficult to quantify, and increasing the soil awareness of the general public should be of high priority. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

sur les sols (RRP1 notamment) aupres des nombreux utilisateurs potentiels regionaux (techniciens, conseillers, administrations, etc.) et territoriaux (collectivites, contrats de rivieres, etc.), ainsi que, pour partie de ces donnees, aupres du grand public. Cette interface est maintenant finalisee dans sa premiere version2 dans le cadre du projet CASDAR3 2007-2010. La plateforme a pour vocation la valorisation aussi bien des donnees pedologiques que des applications realisees a partir de ces donnees. Le developpement de nouveaux modules elargira encore le champ des valorisations. Pour aider a son implantation chez les partenaires impliques dans le programme IGCS4, et veiller a son evolution en la dotant de nouvelles fonctionnalites, la plateforme Websol est mise a disposition (droits de propriete et codes sources) du RMT « Sols et Territoires » 5. L’axe 5 de ce RMT se fixe pour objectifs d’appuyer les deploiements de la plateforme dans les regions candidates, de realiser des supports et des manuels relatifs a l’application, de proposer des evolutions possibles de la plateforme et enfin de clarifier son positionnement juridique par rapport a la Directive INSPIRE.

Microbial biogeography is the study of the distribution of microbial diversity on large scales of space and time. This science aims at understanding biodiversity regulation and its link with ecosystem biological functioning, goods and services such as maintenance of productivity, of soil and atmospheric quality, and of soil health. Although the initial concept dates from the early 20th century (Beijerinck (1913) De infusies en de ontdekking der backterien, in: Jaarboek van de Knoniklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Muller, Amsterdam), only recently have an increasing number of studies have investigated the biogeographical patterns of soil microbial diversity. A such delay is due to the constraints of the microbial models, the need to develop relevant molecular and bioinformatic tools to assess microbial diversity, and the non-availability of an adequate sampling strategy. Consequently, the conclusions from microbial ecology studies have rarely been generally applicable and even the fundamental power-laws differ because the taxa-area relationship and the influence of global and distal parameters on the spatial distribution of microbial communities have not been examined. In this article we define and discuss the scientific, technical and operational limits and outcomes resulting from soil microbial biogeography together with the technical and logistical feasibility. The main results are that microbial communities are not stochastically distributed on a wide scale and that biogeographical patterns are more influenced by local parameters such as soil type and land use than by distal ones, e.g. climate and geomorphology, contrary to plants and animals. We then present the European soil biological survey network, focusing on the French national initiative and the „ECOMIC-RMQS” project. The objective of the ECOMIC-RMQS project is to characterise the density and diversity of bacterial communities in all soils in the RMQS library in order to assess, for the first time, not only microbial biogeography across the whole of France but also the impact of land use on soil biodiversity (Réseau de Mesures de la Qualité des Sols = French Soil Quality Monitoring Network, 2200 soils covering all the French territory with a systematic grid of sampling). The scientific, technical and logistical outputs are examined with a view to the future prospects needed to develop this scientific domain and its applications in sustainable land use.

This study provides the first maps of variations in bacterial community structure on a broad scale based on genotyping of DNA extracts from 593 soils from four different regions of France (North, Brittany, South-East and Landes). Soils were obtained from the soil library of RMQS ('Réseau de Mesures de la Qualité des Sols' = French soil quality monitoring network). The relevance of a biogeographic approach for studying bacterial communities was demonstrated by the great variability in community structure and specific geographical patterns within and between the four regions. The data indicated that the distribution of bacterial community composition might be more related to local factors such as soil type and land cover than to more global factors such as climatic and geomorphologic characteristics. Furthermore, the regional pools of biodiversity could be ordered: South-East ≥ North > Brittany > Landes, according to the observed regional variability of the bacterial communities, which could be helpful for improving land use in accordance with soil biodiversity management.