Biological Indices for Soil Quality Evaluation: Perspectives and Limitations

Paz‐Ferreiro, Jorge; Fu, Shenglei

doi:10.1002/ldr.2262

Cited by 267 publications

(132 citation statements)

References 100 publications

(171 reference statements)

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“…The importance of soil organic carbon in improving the overall soil quality has been widely reported (Debasish et al, 2014;Fialho and Zinn, 2014;Lozano-García and Parras-Alcántara, 2014). Paz-Ferreiro and Fu (2014) reviewed the limitations of using the biochemical, microbiological, and biological properties of soil for soil quality evaluation. The ESQI-2 obtained using the PCA is presented in Fig.…”

Section: Principal Component Analysis-based Index (Esqi-2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of environmental soil quality around Sonepur Bazari mine of Raniganj coalfield, India

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Assessment of soil quality is one of the key parameters for evaluation of environmental contamination in the mining ecosystem. To investigate the effect of coal mining on soil quality, opencast and underground mining sites were selected in the Raniganj coalfield area, India. The physical, chemical, and biological parameters of the soils, and trace metals and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) in the soils were evaluated. Soil dehydrogenase (+79 %) and fluorescein (+32 %) activities were significantly higher in underground mine (UGM) soil, whereas peroxidase activity (+57 %) was higher in opencast mine (OCM) soil. Content of As, Be, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, and Pb was significantly higher in OCM soil, whereas Cd was higher in UGM. In general, the PAHs contents were higher in UGM soils, probably due to the natural coal burning at these sites. The observed values for the above properties were converted into a unitless score (0-1.00) and the scores were integrated into an environmental soil quality index (ESQI). In the unscreened index (ESQI-1) all the soil parameters were included and the results showed that the quality of the soil was better for UGM (0.539) than the OCM (0.511) soils. Principal component analysis was employed to derive ESQI-2 and accordingly, total PAHs, loss on ignition, bulk density, Be, Co, Cr, Ni, Pb, and microbial quotient (respiration: microbial biomass ratio) were found to be the most critical properties. The ESQI-2 was also higher for soils near UGM (+10.1 %). The observed indicators and the ESQI results revealed that soil quality assessment for these coal mining soils is largely depended on soil PAHs and potentially toxic trace metals. The proposed ESQI may be further refined by incorporating specific parameters related to human exposure risks and exposure pathways.

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Section: Principal Component Analysis-based Index (Esqi-2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of environmental soil quality around Sonepur Bazari mine of Raniganj coalfield, India

et al. 2015

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“…Determining soil quality requires identification of soil properties that are important in a soil's ability to carry out its various functions as well as being responsive to changes in land use and land management (Paz-Ferreiro and Fu, 2016;Zolfaghari et al, 2016). CEC plays an important role in soil quality (Brevik, 2009;Khaledian et al, 2016a;Taghizadeh-Mehrjardi, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling soil cation exchange capacity in multiple countries

Khaledian

Brevik

Pereira

et al. 2017

CATENA

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A B S T R A C TCation exchange capacity (CEC), as an important indicator for soil quality, represents soil's ability to hold positively charged ions. We attempted to predict CEC using different statistical methods including monotone analysis of variance (MONANOVA), artificial neural networks (ANNs), principal components regressions (PCR), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in order to compare the utility of these approaches and identify the best predictor. We analyzed 170 soil samples from four different nations (USA, Spain, Iran and Iraq) under three land uses (agriculture, pasture, and forest). Seventy percent of the samples (120 samples) were selected as the calibration set and the remaining 50 samples (30%) were used as the prediction set. The results indicated that the MONANOVA (R 2 = 0.82 and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) = 6.32) and ANNs (R 2 = 0.82 and RMSE = 5.53) were the best models to estimate CEC, PSO (R 2 = 0.80 and RMSE = 5.54) and PCR (R 2 = 0.70 and RMSE = 6.48) also worked well and the results were very similar to each other. While the most influential variables for the various countries and land uses were different and CEC was affected by different variables in different situations, clay (positively correlated) and sand (negatively correlated) were the most influential variables for predicting CEC for the entire data set. Although the MANOVA and ANNs provided good predictions of the entire dataset, PSO gives a formula to estimate soil CEC using commonly tested soil properties. Therefore, PSO shows promise as a technique to estimate soil CEC. Establishing effective pedotransfer functions to predict CEC would be productive where there are limitations of time and money, and other commonly analyzed soil properties are available.

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“…Soil quality is threatened by the increase in human population, by intensive management of cultivable land and by urbanization and soil degradation. There is a general agreement that oil biochemical, microbiological and biological properties are more important than physical and chemical properties for the purpose of estimating alterations in soil quality and hence soil degradation (Keesstra et al, 2012;Paz-Ferreiro and Fu, 2013). Soil organic matter plays an essential role in nutrient (N, P, S, K) cycles, soil stability and the ecological and environmental aspects of sustainability of soil fertility (Garcıa-Gil et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of humic acid applications on modulus of rupture, aggregate stability, electrical conductivity, carbon and nitrogen content of a crusting problem soil

Gümüş¹,

Şeker²

2015

Solid Earth

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Abstract. Soil structure is often said to be the key to soil productivity since a fertile soil, with desirable soil structure and adequate moisture supply, constitutes a productive soil. Soil structure influences soil water movement and retention, erosion, crusting, nutrient recycling, root penetration and crop yield. The objective of this work is to study humic acid (HA) application on some physical and chemical properties in weakly structured soils. The approach involved establishing a plot experiment in laboratory conditions. Different rates of HA (control, 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 %) were applied to soil during three incubation periods (21, 42 and 62 days). At the end of the each incubation period, the changes in physicochemical properties were measured. Generally, HA addition increased electrical conductivity values during all incubation periods. HA applications decreased soil modulus of rupture. Application of HA at the rate of 4 % significantly increased soil organic carbon contents. HA applications at the rate of 4 % significantly increased both mean soil total nitrogen content and aggregate stability after three incubation periods (p < 0.05). Therefore, HA has the potential to improve the structure of soil in the short term.

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Biological Indices for Soil Quality Evaluation: Perspectives and Limitations

Cited by 267 publications

References 100 publications

Assessment of environmental soil quality around Sonepur Bazari mine of Raniganj coalfield, India

Assessment of environmental soil quality around Sonepur Bazari mine of Raniganj coalfield, India

Modeling soil cation exchange capacity in multiple countries

Influence of humic acid applications on modulus of rupture, aggregate stability, electrical conductivity, carbon and nitrogen content of a crusting problem soil

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