Geoderma 114 (2003) 143 – 144

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Preface

The assessment of soil quality

Although a broad consensus exists on the critical importance of soil quality to the
sustainability of human life on earth, little agreement has been reached among soil
scientists as to how soil quality is to be assessed and interpreted. This conundrum has
arisen in part because of the tentacular association of soil quality with holistic approaches
to natural resource management that are difficult to define objectively, and in part
because soils are inherently variable and susceptible to multiple uses for the benefit of
human beings. In spite of these difficulties of semantics and complexity, progress has
been made in the enumeration of minimal criteria to be met by any tractable concept of
soil quality:

 reflect terrestrial ecosystem structure and dynamics, with sensitivity to variation in

climate and human impacts;
 integrate biological, chemical, geological, hydrological, and physical properties of field
soils;
 translate scientific understanding into effective decision-making for soil resource
management.

The present volume collects 14 articles that address the issue of how soil quality
should be assessed quantitatively, a matter that both transcends and precedes the
criteria listed above. On the one hand, the observations and findings in these articles
provide de facto an operational meaning for soil quality, while on the other hand, they
offer information that can lead to fulfillment of the criteria above by some future,
more comprehensive definition of the concept. The first 4 articles contribute to a state-
of-the-art picture of soil quality assessment that has a decided historical context,
whereas the 10 that follow them expose developing methodologies for field and
laboratory characterizations of soil quality status and change. The multiplicity of co-
authors for these papers attests to the inherent necessity of a team approach to this
difficult topic.
We are most indebted to the researchers whose work appears here for their diligent
pursuit of an elusive goal and their positive response to peer review. We also thank the
Kearney Foundation of Soil Science, University of California, for its support of the
assembling and publication of this volume.

0016-7061/03/$ - see front matter D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/S0016-7061(03)00038-7
144 Preface

Garrison Sposito*
Angela Zabel
Division of Ecosystem Sciences, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720-3110, USA
E-mail address: gsposito@nature.berkeley.edu
Tel.: +1-510-643-8297; fax: +1-510-643-2940

* Corresponding author.