Summary
Abstract The term “soil health” has captured the interest of government, and land managers, whilst the academic community has struggled to rationalise its use and wider benefit. It has proved a powerful tool in conveying best practice to a lay audience. However, the widespread adoption of the “metaphor” has resulted in calls for tools that facilitate the measurement of soil health, preferably quantitatively, and often as a single figure, for ease of use/communication and cost of monitoring. The insurmountable problem is that soil health is neither a readily quantifiable nor measurable object. Only organisms can have ‘health’, which manifests as characteristics of a living system—true of complex systems exhibiting “emergent” properties such as resilience in the face of perturbation. We pose
Dig deeper with Pulse AI.
Pulse AI has read the whole catalogue. Ask about this record, its theme, or how the findings apply to UK farming and policy — every answer cites the underlying studies.