A Website for Many Purposes – Soil Quality

The Soil Quality National Technology Development Team is collaborating with the National Soil Tilth Lab, NCERA-59 scientists, and the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop Soil Quality, a web-based, central clearinghouse for soil quality information.  The Soil Quality clearinghouse presents basic soil quality concepts for beginners and will guide advanced users through specifics for soil quality assessment and management.

In addition to providing soil quality information to a worldwide audience, Soil Quality will be used to meet NRCS training objectives.  Students attending the NEDC course "Soil Quality Assessment and Applications for Field Staff," (the revised version to be piloted during Spring 2009) will complete pre-course assignments by visiting Soil Quality allowing formal training time to be used more efficiently.

The Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF) is a soil quality indexing tool that launches from Soil Quality SMAF that provides site-specific interpretations for measured soil properties.  SMAF allows users to input their own lab data or 'what if' scenarios to investigate climate, crop, soils, and management effects on soil quality.

Described as 'Soil Quality for Environmental Health,’ Soil Quality is an experiment in the participatory development of a website to keep content current and provide content authors on-line publication credit for their contributions.
Your contact is NRCS ecologist Dr. Holli Kuykendall at 336-370-3341.