Soil Health

Soil Quality | Soil Biology | Soil Health for Victoria's Agriculture | Soil Assessment Guides | Climate Change - Identifying the impacts on Soil and Soil Health


	The Soil Health section of this website will be continually developed over the next few years as part of a major 'Soil Health' project being funded by the Victorian Government's 'Our Environment, Our Future - Sustainability Action Statement' and the Land and Water Australia 'Healthy Soils for Sustainable Farms' programme. (external links)

Soil is our most fundamental terrestrial asset. It provides, along with sunlight and water, the basis for all terrestrial life: the biodiversity around us, the field crops that we harvest for food and fibre, and animal products (such as meat, milk, eggs, wool). Healthy soils provide us with a range of 'ecosystem services' - they support healthy plant growth, resist erosion, receive and store water, retain nutrients and act as an environmental buffer in the landscape. Soils supply nutrients, water and oxygen to plants, and are populated by soil biota which are essential for decomposition and recycling processes.

The terms ‘soil health’ and ‘soil quality’ are, in a general way, interchangeable. 'Soil quality' is a term generally used more by soil scientists and 'soil health' by others, but they do have different emphasis.

Soil quality is the capacity of soils within landscapes to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant and animal health.
Soil health is the 'fitness' (or condition) of soil to support specific uses (e.g. crop growth) in relation to its potential - as dictated by the inherent soil quality.

Both terms link soil to other concepts about health such as environmental health, human health, plant health, and animal health. ‘soil health’ and ‘soil quality’ represent the capacity of soils to support these other aspects of health. So, just as human health is a functional concept that describes how fit we are to interact with each other and our environment, soil health and soil quality are functional concepts that describe how fit the soil is to support the multitude of roles that can be defined for it.

Related Links

The Australian Government's Natural Resource Management website provides information on specified soil condition indicators (soil acidity, soil organic carbon, soil erosion by water and wind) (external link).

The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service website has a major section devoted to Soil Quality (external link). This website covers soil quality concepts, soil quality assessment, soil quality management and soil quality resources.

The Canadian Government publication "The Health of Our Soil - toward sustainable agriculture in Canada' is available for download on the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada website (external link).

Information on Soil Quality Analysis and Trends at a Regional Scale for Alberta in Canada is provided on the Government of Alberta website (external link).

Information on a web-based tool for assessment of soil quality (SINDI) is available on the Landcare Research, New Zealand website (external link).

The Landcare Research, New Zealand website provides a range of information on soil quality and the functioning of ecosystems (external link) including: soil quality monitoring scheme involving 500 soils from around NZ; soil quality indicators; visual soil assessment and a web-based tool for assessment of soil quality (SINDI) (external link).

The USDA Soil Quality Test Kit Guide is an 82-page booklet containing procedures for twelve on-farm tests, an interpretive section for each test, data recording sheets, and a section on how to build the kit. The guide can be downloaded from the United States Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service website (external link).

The Soil Knowledge Exchange website (external link) is the web component of the Soil Knowledge Brokering Service being supported by the Victorian Catchment Management Council. The Soil Knowledge Exchange provides an aggregation of knowledge resources and links related to soils, as well as being a portal linking the soils community. Its function is to support and complement rather than substitute for other soils web resources.