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Soil Health Indicators Under Climate Change: A Review of Current Knowledge

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Soil Health and Climate Change

Part of the book series: Soil Biology ((SOILBIOL,volume 29))

Abstract

Soil health indicators are a composite set of measurable physical, chemical and biological attributes which relate to functional soil processes and can be used to evaluate soil health status, as affected by management and climate change. Major soil health indicators discussed in the context of climate change are: aggregate stability, water infiltration, and bulk density, soil organic matter content, carbon and nitrogen cycling, microbial biomass and activity, and microbial diversity. In this chapter, we highlight that the selection of a suite of soil health indicators within a minimum data set depends on their sensitivity to management changes, and capacity to integrate and relate to important soil functions. These soil health indicators must also be sensitive to drivers of global change (increasing temperatures, elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide and atmospheric nitrogen deposition, increasing variability in amount, intensity, and distribution of precipitation, extreme climatic events, and their interactions) and should be able to indicate the mitigation and adaptive capability of soil and its resilience to climate change, and provide early warning for the need of implementing climate adaptive management strategies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft version of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environment and Resource Management, Environment and Resource Sciences, 41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD, 4102, Australia

    Diane E. Allen & Ram C. Dalal

  2. NSW Department of Primary Industries, Forest Science Centre, 100, Beecroft, NSW, 2119, Australia

    Bhupinder Pal Singh

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  1. Diane E. Allen
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  3. Ram C. Dalal
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Correspondence to Diane E. Allen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Forest Science Centre, Oratava Avenue 121-131, West Pennant Hills, 2125, New South Wales, Australia

    Bhupinder Pal Singh

  2. Forest Resources Research, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Beecroft, New South Wales, Australia

    Annette L. Cowie

  3. Hawkesbury District Office, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Richmond, New South Wales, Australia

    K. Yin Chan

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Allen, D.E., Singh, B.P., Dalal, R.C. (2011). Soil Health Indicators Under Climate Change: A Review of Current Knowledge. In: Singh, B., Cowie, A., Chan, K. (eds) Soil Health and Climate Change. Soil Biology, vol 29. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20256-8_2

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