Posts Tagged: soil
Soil Health Assessment Report
Soil Biodiversity in California Agriculture: Framework
and Indicators for Soil Health Assessment
Prepared by: California Department of Food and Agriculture Below Ground Biodiversity Advisory Committee
Soil health depends on soil biodiversity.
However, external pressures from land-use change, climate change and certain agricultural practices threaten the biotic networks that underpin the delivery of soil's many ecosystem services. Yet measuring soil biodiversity is a complex task, with a wide variety of possible indicators, and methodologies that are evolving with recent technological advances. This report, prepared by the Belowground Biodiversity Advisory Committee (BBAC) convened by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA), focuses on how best to assess soil biodiversity in the context of working lands and considers current and future challenges faced by California agricultural producers, policy makers, governing agencies, and related stakeholders. The report presents information on the taxonomic and functional diversity of soil organisms, ecosystem services they provide, threats to soil biodiversity, assessment frameworks, and biodiversity indicators. Examples of how biodiversity indicators can be applied to specific use cases provide insights for soil health, sustainable and climate-smart agriculture, and biodiversity conservation in California.
Soil biodiversity is the interconnected ‘social' network of numerous species of living organisms that contribute to soil functioning. As these organisms grow, die, and interact with soil's abiotic components, they perform essential functions in carbon, water and nutrient cycling and plant growth, collectively described as multifunctionality, benefiting ecosystems and humans alike. Comprehensive assessment of soil biodiversity involves measurements of organism abundance, identity, and functional diversity or traits, ideally in tandem with measurements of soil processes, as well as interactions among organisms. Soil biodiversity and soil processes vary in space and time due to factors like location, climate, vegetation, and land management practices across California's diverse landscapes.
Soils are incredibly biodiverse habitats, containing a vast array of organisms ranging from macroscopic organisms like gophers to microscopic worms, fungi, and billions of bacterial cells. The physical and chemical properties of soils – soil texture, pH, water and oxygen content, salinity, organic matter inputs, and nutrients – determine the types of organisms found in a particular habitat. The array of organisms inhabiting soil spans over six orders of magnitude in size, and includes microorganisms (viruses, bacteria, archaea, and fungi); microfauna (protists, nematodes, and tardigrades); mesofauna (mites and springtails); and macrofauna (earthworms). Life in soil exists in ecological communities that are complex and interconnected. These interconnections provide stability to soil functions. Soil organisms are critical to regulation of greenhouse gases, both by consuming and producing gases such as nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and methane. Mycorrhizal fungi in symbiosis with most plant species promotes root growth and availability of water and nutrients. A broad range of soil organisms mediate the decomposition of organic inputs and enhance nutrient cycling. Other functions of biodiverse soils include soil structure formation, organic matter formation, carbon storage, water regulation, and pathogen suppression. But despite these critically important functions, the diversity and complexity of soil biodiversity makes it challenging to decipher these intricate relationships and understand the impact of human activities.
Soil biodiversity faces many of the major threats from human activities and global change that also impact soil health and sustainability of California's agroecosystems. Land use changes, intensive agriculture, climate change, pollution, invasive species, overexploitation, and loss of habitat connectivity all pose risks. These threats disrupt soil biological networks, reduce biodiversity, impair ecosystem functions, and degrade soil structure and fertility. Soil biodiversity loss reduces multifunctionality and the provision of ecosystem services, highlighting the need to recognize the value of belowground communities to overcome challenges such as climate change, land degradation, and overall biodiversity loss. Addressing these challenges through sustainable land management, agroecological approaches, and awareness campaigns is crucial for preserving belowground biodiversity to maintain provision of essential ecosystem services.
READ ALL ABOUT SOIL DIVERSITY in the Report:
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/biodiversity/docs/Soil_Biodiversity_California_Ag_July_2023.pdf
soil food web image
Know Your Dirt
I am frequently asked if I can recommend a book on Soils. And yes, I can. It is Soils: An Introduction by Michael Singer and Donald Munns. The sixth edition recently came out so there's a lot of older used copies floating around on the wed for under $10. This book takes a different tack on describing soils. Instead of tacking the tack of a chapter on Nitrogen another on Calcium etc., it weaves a story of how all the parts are related.
Soil Biodiversity Report
CDFA has released a report on Belowground Biodiversity which provides targeted recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders to enhance soil health and conserve biodiversity, which plays an important role in climate resilience and food production.
An advisory committee of soil scientists authored the report, led by Dr. Kate Scow, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Soil Science and Microbial Ecology at UC Davis: Dr. Eoin Brodie, Deputy Director of the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Dr. Margaret Smither-Kopperl, Manager, Lockeford Plant Materials Center, United States (US) Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service..
“The State of California contains more than 2,500 types of soil – they host a wealth of life that makes vital contributions to the global food supply,” said Dr. Scow. “Improved understanding of belowground biodiversity is essential to achieving a carbon-neutral future and tackling climate change.”
The report provides recommendations including using soil biodiversity as a key metric for assessing and prioritizing soil health and multi-functionality, integrating a soil biodiversity assessment into CDFA's Healthy Soils Program, and developing an adaptive management framework that incorporates soil biodiversity assessment.
wormns and birds
Soil Health?
Soil health refers to the ability of a specific soil to perform multiple functions, including nutrient cycling, sustaining plant and animal growth, maintaining diversity, regulating water dynamics, moderating climate and a whole slew of other attributes we expect of soils. An assessment needs to approach the biological, chemical and physical properties of the soil and how they interact. It's been difficult to create a one-size fits all evaluation process of assessment. Sometimes it might be just as easy to smell it or look at how plants are growing in it to give it a rating, but these measures can be very subjective across noses and viewpoints. The USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service has developed a field methodology that attempts to standardize some of the physical and biological parameters. The in-field assessment comes in both a short and long form. Check them out – Cropland In-Field Soil Health Assessment Guide:
Short version
https://directives.sc.egov.usda.gov/OpenNonWebContent.aspx?content=44419.wba
Long version
soil layers
Find YOUR Soil
Soils vary across a landscape according to soil-forming factors present in a particular location. To help those involved in land management and planning, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched the National Soil Survey in 1899 to systematically map changes in soils across the country. Results were originally organized by county, and the mapping results published in county soil surveys.While the paper surveys were useful, one had to use several maps at different scales to locate the soil-map units for a site-specific location, then cross-reference the mapping unit to tables provided in the survey to obtain information on soil properties. Today, county soil survey information has been converted to a digital format known as the Web Soil Survey (WSS), which is accessible to the public via the Internet. The WSS provides the USDA's official soil survey data and information in a digital format. The tool was developed and is maintained by the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Information in WSS is generated from the National Cooperative Soil Survey conducted by NRCS. The WSS can provide user-defined, site-specific information on soil properties that can be useful for agricultural producers, conservation professionals, scientists and others.
It is important to note that the accuracy of WSS is determined by the scale of the soil map. Most soil surveys are conducted at a scale of 1:20,000; reading soil data and maps should be performed at the same scale to ensure accuracy. A major advantage of WSS over the original paper surveys is that data can be extracted in digital formats, which can be imported directly into a geographic information system (GIS). The information can thenbe spatially aligned with other digital information, such as maps, satellite imagery, photo- graphs, and user-specified geographic coordinates obtained from global positioning systems, or GPS. This allows land-resource managers to efficiently aggregate information tailored to a specific purpose or location. For example, agricultural producers can overlay crop yield maps created with yield monitors with WSS information to determine how different soils may affect crop production
https://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm
Web Soil Survey (WSS) provides soil data and information produced by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. It is operated by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and provides access to the largest natural resource information system in the world. NRCS has soil maps and data available online for more than 95 percent of the nation's counties and anticipates having 100 percent in the near future. The site is updated and maintained online as the single authoritative source of soil survey information.
Soil surveys can be used for general farm, local, and wider area planning. Onsite investigation is needed in some cases, such as soil quality assessments and certain conservation and engineering applications. For more detailed information, contact your local USDA Service Center at the following link: USDA Service Center or your NRCS State Soil Scientist at the following link: NRCS State Soil Scientist.
soil heading pictures