Hi, I'm Matt Yost.
And this is Grant Cardon.
We're Extension Specialist with Utah State University
Extension.
Today, we're going to talk about measuring and building
soil health.
Grant, what is soil health?
And why are we hearing so much about it?
Well, the soil health is overall kind of
defined as the being able to keep a soil
system as a [INAUDIBLE] medium, serving and functioning
as it should over long term without any degradation
not only to the productivity of that particular site,
but topside areas and the environment in general.
It's interesting that soil quality and soil health
have often been used interchangeably.
But the current feel and discussions
revolve around health because they
want to emphasize, we want to emphasize,
the fact that this is a living system and something that
needs to be fed and protected and built over time to function
the way that it should in the natural environment.
There's a lot of national and international attention
now being given to soil health both through the USDA,
Soil Health Division that's been recently formed,
and the Soil Health Institute which
is a nonprofit organization that works not only in the US,
but all over the world, and other things
to try to promote practices that sustain productivity in a given
site without damaging the environment.
So with that concept in mind, what
are some of the things Matt that can deteriorate
soil health over time?
Thanks, Grant.
As we think about soil health, it's really important
to remember that there are lots of properties
of the soil and its health that we can't change.
This soil has been forming for thousands,
in case, millions of years.
And there's some inherent properties about the soil
that we're just never going to change.
And those properties really impact its health.
A few examples of those are the parent material
of our particular soil, or the soil texture, or its hydrology,
and some other things.
And it's important to realize that we just
can't change those things.
But it's equally important to realize
that there's lots of things that we can change about the soil,
and that can change rapidly.
And those are the things, I think,
that we're most interested in.
So things that we do to our soils
that that might cause erosion, might
cause a loss of soil structure, tillage can do that,
other things, things that cause our soils
to lose organic matter, or to increase insalinity.
Those are really things that can deteriorate or diminish
the health of our soil.
And sometimes, it can happen really fast
and in dramatic ways if we're not
careful about how we manage our soils.
So there are quite a few things that
may make soils less healthy.
And so it's important to talk about what
makes them more healthy and how we can improve that health.
So Grant, what are some things that make soils healthier?
Yeah.
Good question.
I think as we look at the things you just
mentioned that can deteriorate things rapidly,
we want to make sure we're protecting against things
like erosion aggregate degradation and things
like that because it is a living system.
There's a lot of microbes and soil,
fauna that really function to help cycle nutrients and cycle
organic materials and so forth and so on.
We need to feed them.
We need to protect them.
We need to promote their function and diversity.
And so if we look at some of the basic things
that we can do to improve that, because we're
looking at it as a living system,
we want to feed that system.
Organic materials are some of the primary foods or feed
for that living system.
And so we want to make sure we're
building organic matter over time.
That's really a key to this.
And because of that, as we put additional organic material
or we maintain organic matter that that's already there
and we use it to advantage in systems,
we can not only feed the microbes that
are doing that function of cycling
that material and nutrients and so forth back to the system,
but they also, in terms of breaking that organic matter
down, provide the building blocks
for things like soil structure and improvement
of aggregate stability over time and those kinds of things.
So the basic soil management principles
that we would promote to accomplish that
is things like adding additional organic matter regularly
where we can in our agricultural practices.
So that might be compost applications, newer
applications, and so forth.
And making sure that we're not only
putting additional food back into the system
for the living part of the soil, but we're
providing the building blocks for that soil
structure and long-term aggregate stability.
Other things we can do, maybe to minimize tillage
in our agricultural practices.
Tillage helps us in a lot of ways--
incorporating things and improving the seed bed
and so forth.
But we can do too much of it, which
can cause more rapid decomposition
of the organic matter that's stored there
and cause a reduction in that over time.
It can also because it's mechanical,
and they get mechanical energy.
We can get aggregate breakdown.
And those aggregates take quite a long time
to deform and to build.
So we're looking at things like minimum tillage
or no tillage, conservation tillage practices.
That we maintain residues there that
can be cycled back into the system, too,
and provide additional organic matter.
We want to make sure that we're careful about our water
management, so we don't get some of the erosion or salinity
buildup that you talked about earlier.
And that's an important aspect to that.
So there's a lot of different things
that we can do particularly maintaining organic matter,
building that over time if we can,
allowing for the feeding of the living part of the system as
well as the cycling and the nutrients,
and just overall protecting-- building and then protecting
soil aggregates and their stability over time.