Teaching Physical Soil Health Indicators Using Analogies from Human Health

To anchor the application of indicators for soil health monitoring in teaching, it is important that the students learn to measure and interpret indicator values. However, the large number of indicators can be overwhelming for students without a strong background in soil science. To address this challenge and to provide guidelines and motivation for the use of indicators, we developed a teaching framework that links physical soil health indicators to analogous functions in the human health domain. This approach was implemented in a block course consisting of 6 afternoons, in which students were tasked with selecting an appropriate set of indicators to assess the physical health of a specific soil profile. In the first part of the course, 18 physical soil health indicators were introduced alongside their analogues in human body functions, and field methods for indicator measurement were explained. In the second part, students designed a field experiment and monitoring set-up to quantify soil health status based on a selected indicator set. In the final part, experimental results were analysed, interpreted, and presented. The human health analogy provided an intuitive framework that supported indicator selection, interpretation, and integration, helping students to understand and quantify physical soil health as a coherent system rather than a collection of isolated indicator measurements.