North American
Project
to Evaluate Soil
Health
Measurements
Soil health is the foundation for productive and regenerative agricultural systems. Farming practices that improve soil health can increase farm profitability and mitigate the effects of climate change while protecting and restoring natural resources for communities and families. However, lack of widely applicable measurements and methods for assessing soil health are significant barriers to adopting soil health practices and systems.
This project will help the industry adopt standardized measurements to evaluate and improve soil health while expanding education and tools for local farmers, agronomists, and landowners. By project conclusion, the Soil Health Institute will recommend an answer to the fundamental question:
How can we consistently measure and monitor soil health at scale?
Highlights
Soil health indicators assessed
Research sites
measured
of all samples collected in spring 2019
Peer Reviewed Publications
- Introducing the North American project to evaluate soil health measurements
- Many papers are in review and as they are published, they will be added here.
Paper Blogs
- Not interested in reading peer review papers? Here we distill the papers to key findings and interesting facts (in less than 500 words!)
- Links under construction—Don’t worry this is coming!
Standard Measurement Methods
We plan to share the laboratory SOPs (Standard Operation Procedures) that SHI uses to communicate needs with commercial soil testing labs. Here we share our SOPs as well as a few How-To videos.
- Under Construction
About
A major goal for this project is to assess the ability of over 30 soil health indicators to detect differences in soil health treatments (crop rotation, reduced tillage, cover cropping, adding organic amendments, and reside retention) that have been managed consistently for 8 to 150 years.
The Institute convened a “blue ribbon panel” of experts from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), several universities, and the private sector to develop consensus on how each indicator should be measured.
A peer-reviewed publication has documented the overall design, and methods employed to identify soil health indicators that are sensitive across agricultural management practices, soil types, and geographies.
View more details about the 30-plus soil health indicators
In addition to these specific indicators, the Soil Health Institute is also evaluating three soil health evaluation frameworks; namely, the Soil Health Management Assessment Framework (Andrews et al., 2004), Cornell’s Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health (Moebius-Clune et al., 2016), and the “Haney test” (Haney et al., 2010).
SHI thanks the following for their input in deliberations on soil health indicator analytical methods:
Veronica Acosta-Martinez – USDA Agricultural Research Service
Alan Franzluebbers – USDA Agricultural Research Service
Doug Karlen – USDA Agricultural Research Service
David Knaebel – USDA Agricultural Research Service
Dan Manter – USDA Agricultural Research Service
Jennifer Moore-Kucera – USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service
David Myrold – Oregon State University
Bob Schindelbeck – Cornell University
Kristen Veum – USDA Agricultural Research Service
Fred Vocasek – ServiTech Labs
For SHI: Sean Bloszies, Wayne Honeycutt, Sheldon Jones, Byron Rath, Steven Shafer, and Paul Tracy
This project is made possible through the generous support of General Mills, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation.
