An understanding of the nature of soils in natural and human influence ecosystems is essential if progress is to be made in the determination and monitoring of soil quality. This paper briefly discuss the changing circumstances which have resulted in the increased awareness of the importance of soil as a key component of both natural and human influenced environmental systems. These changed cir...

Ecologically based farming conserves and improves the soil resource and protects environmental quality by using organic or natural resources without the application of synthetic chemicals. Soil quality assessment indicates the ability of management systems to optimize soil productivity and to maintain its structural and biological integrity. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of ecologica...

of Research Findings Soil quality parameters were assessed at several long-term dryland cropping systems research sites in eastern Washington to further define management practices that are soil building rather than degrading. The objective was to characterize soil quality changes over time as affected by no-till versus traditional tillage-based management systems. Soil organic carbon slowly in...

Much remains to be known concerning the complex relationships between specific soil property measurements and overall soil quality. The objective of this study was to advance our understanding of these complex relationships by further developing and applying a systematic method for evaluating the effects of conventional, integrated and organic apple production systems on soil physical, chemical...

Climate projections propose that drought stress will become challenging for establishing trees. The magnitude of stress is dependent on tree species, provenance, and most likely also highly influenced by soil quality. European Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is of major ecological and economical importance in Central European forests. The species has an especially wide physiological and ecological ampl...

abstract different definitions have been proposed for soil quality. various soil properties have been suggetsted as soil quality indices by researchers. this research was conducted to study the relationship between slope of retention curve at its inflection point (s index) and other soil physical quality indices, because the reserches between s index and soil physical properties are little. thi...

BACKGROUND Monitoring the properties of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in soil water is frequently used to evaluate changes in soil quality and to explain shifts in freshwater ecosystem functioning. METHODS Using >700 individual soils (0-15 cm) collected from a 209,331 km(2) area we evaluated the relationship between soil classification (7 major soil types) or vegetation cover (8 dominant cla...

soil quality is a necessary indicator of land management. different indices are applied to evaluate farming systems, soil types and land uses based on soil quality. the slope of retention curve at its inflection point has been defined as soil physical quality index (si) but the relationships between si and penetration resistance (pr), the least limiting water range (llwr), and available water c...

Objectives The objective of this research is to characterize biological, physical and chemical soil quality parameters and monitor their changes over time in minimum tillage and no-till seeding systems as affected by tillage, crop species and management systems to identify soil quality attributes that can be used in the development of best management practices for conserving soil quality and en...