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:
“A man’s destination is not his destiny,
Every country is home to one man
And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely
At one with his destiny, that soil is his.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“One is conscious of no brave and noble earnestness in it, of no generalized passion for intellectual and spiritual adventure, of no organized determination to think things out. What is there is a highly self-conscious and insipid correctness, a bloodless respectability submergence of matter in manner—in brief, what is there is the feeble, uninspiring quality of German painting and English music.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)