Exploring agricultural soil health through constraints of place: How pedology adds context to understanding soil health evaluation

Defining and measuring agricultural soil health is a relatively new practice for farmers compared with measuring agricultural soil fertility. It was only recently that the Soil Health Institute North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements (NAPESHM) published a press release and paper announcing its recommended measurements for assessing soil health (Bagnall et al. 2023). The team evaluated over 30 soil health measurements and concluded that the minimal best suite of tests includes these three metrics: soil organic carbon (SOC), the directly measurable C component of organic compounds in soil organic matter, 24-hour C mineralization potential following rewetting of air-dried soil using the Solvita method to measure soil respiration, and soil aggregate stability, which describes how strongly soil particles group together, affecting water infiltration, nutrient run off, erosion, aeration, and root growth.