Soil Health Evaluation of Farmland Based on Functional Soil Management—A Case Study of Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, China

Rui Zhao,Kening Wu

doi:10.3390/agriculture11070583

Abstract

Given that farmland serves as a strategic resource to ensure national food security, blind emphasis on the improvement of food production capacity can lead to soil overutilization and impair other soil functions. Hence, the evaluation of soil health (SH) should comprehensively take soil productivity and ecological environmental effects into account. In this study, five functions from the perspective of functional soil management were summarized, including primary productivity, provision and cycling of nutrients, the provision of functional and intrinsic biodiversity, water purification and regulation, and carbon sequestration and regulation. For each soil function, in view of the natural and ameliorable conditions affecting SH, basic indicators were selected from the two aspects of inherent and dynamic properties, and restrictive indicators were chosen considering the external properties or environmental elements, with the minimum limiting factor method coupled with weighted linear model. The new evaluation system was tested and verified in Yixing City, China. The healthy and optimally functional soils were concentrated in the northeast and mid-west of Yixing City, whereas unhealthy soils were predominant in the south and around Taihu Lake. The main limitations to SH improvement included cation exchange capacity, nutrient elements, and soluble carbon. The SH evaluation method was verified using the crop performance validation method, and a positive correlation was noted between food production stability index and soil health index, indicating that the evaluation system is reasonable.

Highlights

Among the 17 sustainable development goals covered by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 13 goals are directly or indirectly related to soil, the basis for sustainable food production and environmental protection [1]
The soil in the low mountain areas in the south is dominated by yellow brown soil and red soil; the northwest is dominated by white soil; the middle and east of Gehu Lake is covered with yellow clay; the middle and western polder is concentrated with gleyed paddy soil; and the eastern ditch district is dominated by lake white soil and fluvo-aquic soil
As spatial scale has a greater impact on the setting of multiplier classification of hazard indicators, this study only considered the impact of hazard indicators of soil health (SH) on the study area, and two multipliers were established according to the relative influence of soil inherent and dynamic properties, focusing on the comparative investigation and analysis of SH of the study area (Table 3)

Summary

Introduction

Among the 17 sustainable development goals covered by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 13 goals are directly or indirectly related to soil, the basis for sustainable food production and environmental protection [1]. Human society is facing the challenges of global population, resources, environment, ecology, and other issues, which have increased the burden on global soil resources as a result of population pressure and related land-use changes, exerting a tremendous impact on food security and the sustainable development of agriculture [4,5,6,7]. The agricultural sector has been facing the challenge of increasing primary productivity to meet the growing global food security needs [8], and the difficulty of land use management and agricultural environmental protection has been increasing. Under the promotion of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, International Soil Science Federation, and other institutions, a consensus has been reached on the concept of SH management and protection; a clear method for assessing SH has not yet been defined

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion