ASSESSMENT OF TEMPORAL VARIABILITY OF KEY SOIL HEALTH INDICATORS WITH MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

In this project we will answer the No.1 question that stands in the way of practically implementing soil health indicators for management decisions: WHEN should we measure soil health? In other words, will we retrieve different values if we sample at different times of the growing season?To answer this question, we will survey a small set of soil health indicators (Liptzin et al. 2022) that have been shown to be spatially sensitive at the continental north American scale with a very high temporal resolution on long term plots and assess:Objective 1: what is the temporal variability and sensitivity of soil health indicators to tillage strategies?Objective 2: what is the temporal variability and sensitivity of soil health indicators to cover cropping strategies?