Articles | Volume 11, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-11-609-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-11-609-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Forum article
| 
10 Sep 2025
Forum article |
| 10 Sep 2025
| 10 Sep 2025
Benchmarking soil multifunctionality
Department of Terrestrial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), P.O. Box 50, 6700 AB, Wageningen, the Netherlands
Sustainable Soil Management Group, Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, P.O. Box 1528, 8901 BV, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
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Short summary
Soil health is of critical importance, and many soils are threatened. Benchmarking sustainable soil management is a challenge as there is no comprehensive indicator set. Here, I introduce a novel conceptual approach to soil health, representing soil functions as complex and hard-to-measure variables. I outline a new methodology to study soil health using latent-variable models to represent soil functions. This is a new starting point for soil health research and ultimately monitoring.
Soil health is of critical importance, and many soils are threatened. Benchmarking sustainable...
