Soil quality is an account of the soil’s ability to provide ecosystem and social services through its capacities to perform its functions under changing conditions.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service,
Soil quality is the capacity of a specific kind of soil to function, within natural or managed ecosystem boundaries, to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality, and support human health and habitation.
Soil quality is said to be a measure of the condition of soil relative to the requirements of one or more biotic species and or to any human need or purpose.
Soil quality reflects how well a soil performs the functions of maintaining biodiversity and productivity, partitioning water and solute flow, filtering and buffering, nutrient cycling, and providing support for plants and other structures. Soil management has a major impact on soil quality.
Soil quality in agricultural terms is measured on a scale of soil value (Bodenwertzahl) in Germany.
Read more about Soil Quality: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words soil and/or quality:
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement.... Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.”
—Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912–1981)