Soil Quality

Soil quality is the capacity of a specific kind of soil to function, within natural or managed ecosystem boundaries, to sustain biological productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality and promote human health (Karlen et al., 1997). Soil quality began to be interpreted as a sensitive and dynamic way to document soil conditions, as a response to management or as resistance to stress imposed by land use changes. An important feature of soil quality is the differentiation between inherent and dynamic soil properties.