Soil Health Indicators for Scotland: Soil Health Indicators reflecting the situation in Scotland – Are they working?

A structured literature search was undertaken to assess suitable soil health indicators covering soil chemistry, physics and biology for Scottish agricultural system and climate. The outcomes were ranked for the number of times mentioned and compared with a list of indicators created through a logical sieve method from work with AHDB. The indicators compared well and the the indicator for soil organic matter (SOM) was investigated in more detail to review the method, using Soilfinder website information, to create bands of good, moderate and poor SOM levels. This was after an outcome from a farmers meeting discussing soil quality where SOM was raised as an important issue. The proposed method worked well for most soil types but under estimated SOM in some grassland soils and gave never wide bands for good in upland grass soils. These may need refinement.