10 Facts About Soil health

Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment.

Soil health testing is pursued as an assessment of this status but tends to be confined largely to agronomic objectives, for obvious reasons.

Soil health depends on soil biodiversity, and it can be improved via soil management, especially by care to keep protective living covers on the soil and by natural soil amendments.

The addition of the word "Soil health" shifted the perception to be integrative, holistic and systematic.

Soil health is the condition of the soil in a defined space and at a defined scale relative to a set of benchmarks that encompass healthy functioning.

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Finally, intrinsic to the discussion on soil health are many potentially conflicting interpretations, especially ecological landscape assessment vs agronomic objectives, each claiming to have soil health criteria.

Different soils will have different benchmarks of health depending on the “inherited” qualities, and on the geographic circumstance of the soil.

Specific benchmarks used to evaluate soil health include CO2 release, humus levels, microbial activity, and available calcium.

Soil health testing is spreading in the United States, Australia and South Africa.

The approach of other soil labs entering the soil health field is to add into common chemical nutrient testing a biological set of factors not normally included in routine soil testing.