Land Quality Assessment and Monitoring: The Next Challenge for Soil ScienceEnglish Full Text

H. ESWARAN and J. KIMBLEU.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, PO Box 2890, Washington DC 20013 (USA)

Abstract: Sustainable land management （SLM） is the key to harmonizing environmental and ecological concerns of society with the economic realities of producing adequate food and fiber of high quality and ensuring a basic minimal quality of life. The aim of SLM is to maintain the integrity of the biophysical land resource base, but it can only be realized if land users understand the impacts of land management options on their lands but also on other off-site areas and can optimize the socioeconomic and environmental benefits of their choice. To facilitate this, the contribution of soil survey organizations would be through the assessment and monitoring of land quality. Land quality is a measure of the ability of land to perform specific functions and is derived by an integration of soil survey information with other environmental, and if necessary, socioeconomic information. The desired reliability influences the operational scale of the assessment. Such an assessment would assist in: 1) locating homologous areas for research sites or for transferring technologies; 2) providing the geographic basis for systems analysis （e.g. by modeling）; 3) serving as a basis for local, national and global resource assessment and monitoring; 4) providing an ecosystem context for land use, assessments of temporal and spatial variability, and impact of human interventions; 5) serving as a framework for more detailed assessment for all levels of interest; and 6) evaluating global issues such as food security, impacts of climate change, biodiversity monitoring, and addressing desertification.Based on an evaluation of the progress made in soil resource inventories and considering the demands of the environment focused world, the paper considers the need for countries to mount such a program. The authors believe that this is the next demand of soil science and that we can fulfill our social contract by periodically providing such information on the state of a nation’s land resource.

Keywords：

degradation; land quality; monitoring of soils; sustainable land management;

Series：
(D) Agriculture
Subject：
Fundamental Science of Agriculture; Agronomy
Classification Code：
S159

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Land Quality Assessment and Monitoring: The Next Challenge for Soil ScienceEnglish Full Text

H. ESWARAN and J. KIMBLEU.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, PO Box 2890, Washington DC 20013 (USA)

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