Predicting the Base Neutralization Capacity of Soils Based on Texture, Organic Carbon and Initial pH: An Opportunity to Adjust Common Liming Recommendation Approaches to Specific Management and Climate Conditions

Abstract

Liming is an effective measure to increase the soil pH and to counterbalance soil acidification. Therefore, the liming recommendations (LRs) for agricultural practice consider two aspects: changing the initial pH to the desired pH and compensating for all pH decreases taking place within the liming interval. The separation of these aspects is essential to optimize LRs and to minimize lime losses to the environment. Therefore, we developed a pedotransfer function (PTF) to calculate the lime demand to change the initial pH to the desired pH and compared the results with the LRs for agricultural practice. Applying this PTF to a set of 126 soil samples that were analyzed for base neutralization capacity could explain approximately 78% of the variability in the pH changes after the addition of different amounts of Ca(OH)2. Consequently, the lime demand to change the initial pH to the desired pH increased by approximately one-sixth compared to the lime demand proposed by the liming recommendation scheme, which is commonly used in Germany. From the numerical difference between the lime demand according to the LRs and the PTF, we calculated the annual acidification rates based on the soil texture, organic matter content and initial pH. Decoupling the abovementioned two aspects of LRs might be helpful to optimize the LRs by adapting to different regions, diverse management strategies and a changing climate.