Olive groves face severe soil erosion, threatening their sustainability. This study reviewed existing research to understand how and why erosion happens. By analysing data from various measurement methods, we found that erosion rates are unsustainable and that while natural factors contribute, farming practices, especially keeping soil bare, drive significant soil loss. Adding ground cover can cut soil loss by over half. This urges the adoption of soil conservation practices.

We reviewed the literature on soil health definition, indicators and assessment frameworks, highlighting sensing technologies' significant potential to improve current time-consuming and costly assessment methods. We proposed a soil health assessment framework from an ecological perspective free from human bias, that leverages proximal sensing, remote sensing, machine learning, and sensor data fusion to enable objective, rapid, cost-effective, scalable, and integrative assessments.