Advances in Measuring Soil Health

The renewed interest in understanding and improving soil health has placed greater emphasis on the ways soil health can be measured. has been a wealth of research on developing better lab analytical techniques, in-situ and remote sensing technologies to achieve these goals. This collection reviews these developments and their implications for better monitoring and management of farm soils. This volume begins with a review of advances in measuring soil biological activity. Chapters cover developments in molecular techniques such as next-generation sequencing as well as improvements in measuring fauna such as earthworms, microbial and fungal communities. Part 2 surveys developments in measuring soil physical properties. The book discusses advances in visual, imaging and geophysical techniques as well as ways of assessing key properties such as erodibility. Part 3 summarises advances in measuring soil chemical properties using spectral and other techniques. The collection concludes by reviewing soil health indicators and decision support systems for improving soil management. With its distinguished editor and expert authors, Advances in measuring soil health will be a standard reference for university and other researchers in soil and crop science, government and other agencies responsible for the health of agricultural soils, companies providing soil monitoring services, and farmers wishing to know more about the latest developments in soil monitoring. Dr Wilfred Otten is Professor of Soil Biophysics at Cranfield University, UK. He is past President of the British Soil Science Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Soil Science and is a member of the organising committee for the forthcoming World Congress on Soil Science in 2022. Professor Otten is internationally-renowned for his research on measuring and modelling physical, chemical and microbial processes in soil.