Soil Health

Soil health in agricultural systems.

Soil health is presented as an integrative property that reflects the capacity of soil to respond to agricultural intervention, so that it continues to support both the agricultural production and the provision of other ecosystem services. The major challenge within sustainable soil management is to conserve ecosystem service delivery while optimizing agricultural yields. It is proposed that so...

Sustainable Agriculture, Soil Health, and Soil Organic Matter

The latter two principles protect the soil resource on which all food and fibre production ultimately depends. However, agricultural production systems differ from ‘natural’ or undeveloped systems in that they can be considered to be ‘leaky’ with respect to nutrients. This is inevitable, due to nutrient removal in harvested product, but inappropriate fertiliser management can exacerbate the ‘le...

Soil and human health: an epidemiological review

Two different approaches have been used to study relationships between soil and human health: aggregateand individual-level. Aggregate-level is the primary approach used in the geosciences and broadly relates spatial soil characteristics to geographic incidence of disease. However, this may not be appropriate for a wide range of exposures and disease outcomes. For example, many diseases with lo...

Role of Enzymes in Maintaining Soil Health

Enzymes are the vital activators in life processes, likewise in the soil they are known to play a substantial role in maintaining soil health and its environment. The enzymatic activity in the soil is mainly of microbial origin, being derived from intracellular, cell-associated or free enzymes. A unique balance of chemical, physical, and biological (including microbial especially enzyme activit...

Managing Fertilizers to Enhance Soil Health