查看文章

The Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF) was developed to collectively assess biological, chemical, and physical soil health changes due to management practices. SMAF scoring curves were designed to be site-specific but were never validated at national scale. Our goal was to verify the national effectiveness of SMAF for detecting changes induced by conservation practices. Data from 456 articles representing the U.S. was compiled as input for a SMAF analysis. Soil organic-C (SOC), microbial biomass-C (MBC), β-glucosidase activity (BG), macroaggregate stability (AS), bulk density (BD), pH, soil-test P and K indices and an overall soil quality index (SQI) were computed. Measured, scored, and SQI values were used to evaluate tillage intensity [conventional (CT), reduced tillage (RT), no-till (NT), and zero disturbance (perennial systems; PER)] and soil cover [annual cropping systems without cover …