Integrated soil health management: a framework for soil conservation and regeneration

Publication date: 06/08/2018
Extent: 20 pages

Contributions by: Daniel K. Manter and Jorge A. Delgado, USDA-ARS, USA; and Jennifer Moore-Kucera, USDA-NRCS, USA

Chapter synopsis: Soil function is an interplay of physical, chemical and biological processes, and soil microbes play a direct role in driving soil chemical and physical processes important for overall ecosystem function. This chapter highlights some of the known impacts of management strategies on soil health, conservation and regeneration. The chapter introduces an Integrated Soil Health Management (ISHM) framework that may be used to design, implement and evaluate management decisions for soil conservation and regeneration. The chapter examines the role of soil microbes in chemical and physical processes as well as plant processes, and also examines the challenge of moving beyond tolerable soil loss (T) to ISHM.

DOI: 10.19103/AS.2017.0033.05