Abstract
Soil Health research tends to bias to a biology/microbiology emphasis. We believe this bias neglects important physical and chemical interactions in soil that are crucial to soil function. We offer several examples illustrating this bias, and how it may misrepresent management practices that have the greatest influence on Soil Health. Four suggestions are given as approaches to mitigate this bias. By appreciating soil structure as a foundation for Soil Health and its microbial community, we believe better recommendations can be made to assist the farm community in its stewardship of soil as a critical natural resource.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-7-2022
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soisec.2022.100051
Funding Information
The production of this work was supported by a 2021 Northeast SARE Research and Education grant “Developing an Affordable Soil Health Test for the Appalachian Region to Incentivize Sustainable Agricultural Production.”
Repository Citation
Coyne, Mark S.; Pena-Yewtukhiw, E. M.; Grove, John H.; Sant'Anna, A. C.; and Mata-Padrino, D., "Soil Health – It's Not All Biology" (2022). Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications. 172.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/pss_facpub/172
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Soil Security, v. 6, 100051.
© 2022 The Authors
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).