Soil Health Evaluation of Farmland Based on Functional Soil Management—A Case Study of Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

Given that farmland serves as a strategic resource to ensure national food security, blind emphasis on the improvement of food production capacity can lead to soil overutilization and impair other soil functions. Hence, the evaluation of soil health (SH) should comprehensively take soil productivity and ecological environmental effects into account. In this study, five functions from the perspective of functional soil management were summarized, including primary productivity, provision and cycling of nutrients, the provision of functional and intrinsic biodiversity, water purification and regulation, and carbon sequestration and regulation. For each soil function, in view of the natural and ameliorable conditions affecting SH, basic indicators were selected from the two aspects of inherent and dynamic properties, and restrictive indicators were chosen considering the external properties or environmental elements, with the minimum limiting factor method coupled with weighted linear model. The new evaluation system was tested and verified in Yixing City, China. The healthy and optimally functional soils were concentrated in the northeast and mid-west of Yixing City, whereas unhealthy soils were predominant in the south and around Taihu Lake. The main limitations to SH improvement included cation exchange capacity, nutrient elements, and soluble carbon. The SH evaluation method was verified using the crop performance validation method, and a positive correlation was noted between food production stability index and soil health index, indicating that the evaluation system is reasonable.

Spatiotemporal Changes of Cultivated Land System Health Based on PSR-VOR Model—A Case Study of the Two Lake Plains, China

“…The system of cultivated land is a complicated one that is controlled by humans and is not an unadulterated part of the natural environment [ 27 ]. The evaluation of the health status of the cultivated land system needs to comprehensively screen the ecological, environmental, social, economic, and other attribute indicators related to the cultivated land from the meso and macro scales [ 25 , 30 ]. Under the principle of scientific, comprehensive, systematic, and feasible indicator selection, first, select indicators can completely and accurately reflect the health status of the cultivated land system; second, it is relatively easy to obtain data and the calculation amount of indicators is relatively reasonable; third, according to the status quo of cultivated land use and the changing characteristics of cultivated land landscape patterns in the two lake plains, a practical indicator system of cultivated land system health evaluation is constructed to reflect the pertinence and comprehensiveness of cultivated land system health evaluation.…”

“…According to academics, the cultivated land system’s health condition is a complete representation of the cultivated land system, and research on the cultivated land system’s health status may provide fresh concepts for its management, preservation, and sustainable use. As a result, some researchers have used the Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF), the Soil Health Comprehensive Assessment—Cornell Framework (CASH), the Meta—Analytic Hierarchy Process index (Meta—AHP), the Soil Indicator Assessment (SINDI), the Soil Health Index (SHI), and other methods to assess the state of cultivated land system health and optimize farmland management practices [ 18 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]. In addition, some academics have conducted an empirical study on the health state of the cultivated land system by building an evaluation index system based on several scales, including towns, counties, cities, and provinces [ 26 , 27 ].…”

Classification of agricultural land consolidation types based on soil security to improve limiting factors adapted to local soil conditions

“…The lower level of SS, the more incredible difficulty ALC has due to technical, cost, and time constraints (Shao & Yuan, 2019). Based on the limiting factors identified by the obstacles diagnosis model (Zhao & Wu, 2021), the land parcels were taken as units to identify improvable limiting factors. First, the indicators with scores lower than 60 are regarded as the limiting factors and eliminated some factors with less than 50 land parcels or a total area of less than 0.01%.…”

Study on Health Evaluation of an Ecological Irrigation District in Helan County, China

“…For example, Hu [21], Fang et al [22], Zhao [23], and Chang [25] adopted subjective weighting methods, in which the first three used AHP, and the fourth one was based on expert opinions. Li [24], Zhao [57], and Wang [29] used EWM, the coefficient of variation method, and the random forest model, respectively, to determine the index weight, which are all objective weighting methods.…”