Download or read book Guidelines for Soil Quality Assessment in Conservation Planning written by U.S. Department of Agriculture and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-04-06 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soil quality is the capacity of a specific kind of soil to function within natural or managed ecosystem boundaries to: ? sustain plant and animal productivity ? maintain or enhance water and air quality ? support human health and habitation Soil function describes what the soil does. Soil functions are: (1) sustaining biological activity, diversity, and productivity; (2) regulating and partitioning water and solute flow; (3) filtering and buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposition; (4) storing and cycling nutrients and other elements within the earth