AbstractA method for determination of the “basic” respiration rate of soils, as the rate of O2‐consumption, has been developed. It includes standardization of both the handling of samples before determination and of the temperature and the water content at which the determination is performed. The respiration rate determined in this way varies less than normally occurs when samples of a soil are taken over a period of time. Neither the handling at sampling nor the variation in time before determination influences the result. Comparisons between a soil's respiration rate and its ability to decompose a pesticide are more easily made if the decomposition data can be expressed in mathematical form and thereby linearized. This has been done for linuron and glyphosate by plotting the decomposition data according to the formulac=co–k√tt.Good correlation between the rate of respiration and the rate of decomposition (k‐value) was found for linuron and glyphosate in laboratory experiments and also for glyphosate in field