Visual Soil Evaluation Realizing Potential Crop Production with Minimum Environmental Impact

Visual Soil Evaluation (VSE) provides land users and environmental authorities with the tools to assess soil quality for crop performance. This book describes the assessment of the various structural conditions of soil, especially after quality degradation such as compaction, erosion or organic matter loss. Covering a broad range of land types from abandoned peats to prime arable land, this useful handbook assesses yield potential across a range of scales. It also appraises the use of VSE in determining the potential of different land types for carbon storage, greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient leaching, and for diagnosing and rectifying erosion and compaction in soils.

1. Describing Soil Structures and Recognising Damage

2. Reducing the Yield Gap by Recognising the Global and Local Potential of Soil

3. Assessing Structural Quality and Crop Performance for Agronomy

4. Evaluating Land Quality for Carbon Storage, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Nutrient Leaching

5. Judging the Agronomic Potential of Highly Organic Soils

6. Soil Structural Quality under Adverse Climatic Conditions

7. Choosing and Evaluating Soil Improvements by Subsoiling, Compaction Control and Drainage

8. Visual Evaluation of Grassland and Arable Management Impacts on Soil quality

9. The Look of Soils in the Future