Assessing the impact of some of the top-ranking soil properties associated with soil health

Soil health is essential for a well-functioning, healthy food web that is vital for sustaining agricultural productivity. Evaluating soil health involves the assessment of physical, chemical, and biological indicators that reflect the soil's capacity to support plant growth, resist degradation, and sustain ecosystem functions. Soil health is viewed as a living system that can change and improve over time with the focus on long-term sustainability and recovery. Assessing soil health can help land managers, farmers, and environmentalists understand the current condition of the soil as well as make informed decisions for long term sustainable land managements. There are common approaches used to assess soil health and ecosystem recovery such as soil quality assessment where soil quality indicators are measured. Monitoring soil quality indicators over time is an essential step, involves the use of various tests and measurements that provide data on key soil attributes.

The present work aims to assess the impacts of some of the top-ranking soil properties associated with soil health in aiming to develop an integrated indicator of soil health for stakeholders which could help deliver essential ecosystem services. Overall, 15 soil properties were selected and analysed by calculating response ratios of each indicator paired with practices. The effects of vegetation cover vs no cover, the effect of different vegetation cover and different tillage systems were compared. Over 350 topsoil and sub-soil samples were collected from the TUdi partners’ mid- and long-term experimental sites differing in climate, land use, soil type and management. Our proposed list of sensitive indicators for the topsoil layer are available phosphorus, exchangeable Ca, total nitrogen, soil carbon, soil respiration, root length density and root dry weight. For the sub-soil layer, sensitive indicators are exchangeable sodium, root length density and root dry weight. By introducing two new soil biology indicators linked to plant root traits, this raises the possibility of measuring and comparing other easily measurable root traits in future research, to provide an integrated soil health indicator for soil monitoring. Providing such an inexpensive methodology, accessible to stakeholders with minimum training, should help stakeholders assess the ability of the soil to deliver the necessary ecosystem services.