Documenting Soil Health Assessment Methods and Jump Starting Carbon and Nutrient Cycles for the Sustainable Restoration of Soil Health

A comparative soil health assessment approach is needed to document the ability of current and proposed soil health test methods to differentiate known healthy soils from “less healthy” soils. A comprehensive evaluation of soil health assessment methods will be made on soil samples collected from fields with a long history of soil and crop management practices that improve soil health (e.g. no-till/never till systems with Cover Crops) to the same soils collected from fields in close proximity to the healthy soil location, but under more traditional soil and crop management systems (e.g. rotational tillage without Cover Crops). The high-carbon amendments targeted by the proposed field demonstration project have been previously proven to have positive effects at smaller scales; this project will demonstrate the positive impacts of these amendment applications at an agriculturally relevant scale. Differences in soil health will be quantified by measuring soil physical, chemical, biological properties, soil microbial community structure as well as the Solvita and Haney soil tests. A management protocol that farmers can use to conduct large scale in situ soil rehabilitation on mined lands and other areas where surface soils have been dramatically altered will be developed.