Approaches to Soil Health Analysis, Volume 1

Efforts to build agricultural resilience through high functioning soil resources are still in their infancy, as documented by national adoption rates for soil health associated practices, and especially soil health management systems across entire human‐managed landscapes (Karlen & Rice, 2015; Wade et al., 2015). Fortunately, federal, state, NGO and private‐sector organizations and individuals are working diligently to advance awareness of soil health and the management practices that improve it. Through increased research, on farm implementation, and policy changes progress is inevitable. The focus in “Approaches to Soil Health Analysis” is to build standardized, basic capacity to better inform management decisions and quantify outcomes of soil health management system implementation.

Soil health developments during the past three decades have been progressive, provocative, and are thus still under debate. As such, this two‐volume contribution in no way is conceived as providing any final answers, but is envisioned as a step toward incorporating soil health into mainstream soil, water, and environmental science programs, and more importantly into every day agricultural management. Hopefully, they will also open new doors and stimulate additional study and education needed to encourage humankind to recognize the truth in Larson’s often quoted statement that soil is “the thin layer covering the planet that stands between us and starvation” (Karlen et al., 2014).

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