Soil Vital Signs: A New Soil Quality Index (SQI) for Assessing Forest Soil Health; Forest Service research paper

摘要

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program measures a number of chemical and physical properties of soils to address specific questions about forest soil quality or health. We developed a new index of forest soil health, the soil quality index (SQI), that integrates 19 measured physical and chemical properties of forest soils into a single number that serves as the soils vital sign of overall soil quality. Regional and soil depth differences in SQI values due to differences in soil properties were observed. The SQI is a new tool for establishing baselines and detecting forest health trends.