 Here on the banks of the Talapusa River in East Central Alabama, these flood plains and stream terraces have seen many changes in land use over time. For thousands of years, Native Americans used these lands to provide food and shelter. When Europeans came to the New World, they also used the same lands for food and shelter. Each generation and culture that has used this land has had different expectations of how they wanted that land to function. Today, within a half mile of the river banks, here where we're standing, many different land uses occur. You have croft land, you have forest land, you have orchards, you have urban land. The one thing all these various land uses have in common are that they represent the different expectations and functions that we have of soils. Each land user is managing the land to meet their own unique expectations. This patchwork of land use has come together to form a larger landscape that eventually leads to the river's edge. The land management decisions that are made up there end up here and tell the story of how well we have managed the land. Maintaining and improving soil quality is the first step in reducing water and air quality problems. A key principle to enhance soil quality is to increase soil organic matter. This is done by reducing tillage, increasing biomass production, grazing management, and using a diversity of plants in your system. It is the mission of the Soil Quality Institute to support our field staff and the application of soil quality principles. We do this by working with land grant colleges, the Agriculture Research Service, and others to transfer site-based information in a format that is usable at the field office level. This is Callaway Gardens. Today it's a unique recreational site, but underneath the ground is a story that's relevant to land managers across the country. Sixty years ago this was all cotton ground. Case and Callaway bought the ground in the 1940s and he and his family have been restoring it into the beautiful gardens that you see around us at this time. Although the recovery of this land is evident above ground with all the lush vegetation, the scars of the past are still shown in gullies that we have up through here. These are scattered throughout this landscape. Before European settlement, much of the soils in this region look similar to this with a dark surface horizon underlain by an E horizon or a Lube horizon in which clay, iron, and other nutrients had been leached down into the lower profile over thousands and thousands of years. These type of horizonations allowed for water movement to move into the profile and seek deep into the soils and recharge ground waters and have plenty of water available for plant growth later. Let's move up the hill up above the gully and look at the soil profile. As you can see, there's a very thin A horizon overlaying the clayy subsoil, the clayy red subsoil. Remember the above horizons had been washed away that were evident in the profile that we looked at before. Those horizons had allowed water to move freely into the soil and be there for plant growth and for groundwater recharge. All that material is gone and these gardens, just like many of the agricultural soils in this nation, are growing in what was once subsoil. Now the rainwater hits the soil surface and runs off. Before the calloways began the gardens here, those waters would have carried lots of sediment with them and they have since been able to stop the flow of sediment into the streams and waters of this area in Georgia. As a result of the soil's inability to uptake water in these areas around here receive about 55 or 60 inches of rainfall a year. The calloways family has installed these sprinklers to supplement the annual rainfall. What happens is since the water has run off, the calloways catch this water in watershed basins and pump it back up on the slopes and water the vegetation around here. The lesson here, regardless of where you are in the country, is that the management decisions you make today will last for generations to come. We're here today at the E.V. Smith Agriculture Experiment Station of Auburn University and the Alabama Experiment Station. We're going to start talking about the five basic functions that soils perform. And not only do the soils perform these five basic functions but each segment of the landscape will perform these functions and the soil in that segment of the landscape will take a predominant role in those functions. Now the five functions are to petition and regulate the flow of water, to cycle nutrients, buffer and filter contaminants, provide structural support and provide productivity and biodiversity for the environment. Soil quality is the capacity of soil to perform the five functions. If land use is the job description that we write for soil, then soil quality is the assessment of the job skills and the job performance of the soil. Now we'll start with petitioning and regulating the flow of water and essentially what that means is that when rainfall comes down and hits the ground it has two options. It will infiltrate into the soil, recharge groundwater and provide moisture for plant growth or it will run off. And this conventionally tilled spot here you can see the crusting that occurs on unprotected soil causing even more runoff to happen. So very little water is getting into the soil system to provide water for the plants and recharge groundwater. Now when a soil is not functioning and you're getting more runoff than you have infiltration you start getting these flow patterns across the landscape that will begin to impact the areas around the field. Now in this segment it begins the water petitioning and cycling of nutrients with the crops and also does some buffering of contaminants here but whatever does move into the soil will begin that buffering process. That's important for that to move in there so those processes can occur so that's why the water infiltration part of the functioning soil is so vital to an entire system. Now as anything that is going wrong and causing runoff to occur moves down the system and will go down here to the buffer area and in this area below this part of the segment of the landscape anything that moves down like I said will now be handled by this part of the landscape. Here we have grasses that will begin to uptake the nutrients that are excess from the field. It will start slowing down the flow of water and reducing the sediment. This sediment will now fill into this area and after time if the problems above us are not corrected will start impacting this area where it will not be able to function as well. Now the buffering and nutrient cycling that occur here when they're doing its job and functioning very little will move off site and it will all be handled in this spot. However once this area's ability to function is impacted and decreased we move on to the next segment of the landscape and that segment is back here in the wetland and we'll go back here and take a look at it. Now back in this wetland it's somewhat the last line of the fence before we reach the major water bodies and streams. All the contaminates and nutrients that have not been handled by the second part of our landscape finally gets to here and wetlands are often called the kidneys of the earth because they do all the cleaning of the waters that move through here. There's also quite a bit of nutrient cycling that goes on because we have lots of lush vegetation to soak up the nutrients and everything that moves in here. So anything that happens to this wetland to impact its ability to function will now cause it to be a much poorer filter and these waters that leave here will now either move into the stream, the Talapusa River in this case, and cause pollutants in the river or move into the ground waters and cause contamination of ground water. Now let's go back up on the landscape and look at some of the management practices that we can use to protect this system of filters and buffers across the landscape that we have in place here naturally. One of the major practices that can be used, especially here in the southeast, but also it's a practice that can be used in most parts of the country and is probably one of the oldest practices, agricultural practices known to man, is the use of cover crops. In this instance we have a rye cover crop that was grown and just killed about two weeks ago. This cover crop was not killed by chemical means. It was rolled down by a crimper in which the roller moves in this direction and this is the direction in which it will be planted in. So the residue that is here, this thick matter residue, will not be a problem through the planting process. And as you can see, this is a pretty thick matter residue. One of the things that this does is allow the soil to retain its moisture and there'll be plenty of moisture when the cotton is planted into this field. And I'll dig down just a little bit here just to show the nice moist field. In a moment we'll move over to an area which there has not been a cover crop on and you'll see how dry the soil is. Now these cover crops not only provide added biomass which will increase the soil's carbon and this increase in soil carbon will also increase the soil's ability to retain water but also it improves aggregation which helps the soil's ability to let the water infiltrate into the soil system. It also intercepts the raindrop impact which will occur frequently throughout the growing season and throughout the winter time. So most of the water that hits on this site, the researchers have shown about 85 to 90 percent of it will soak in. When cover crops are not used, only about 50 to 60 percent of the water that falls will sink in and the rest will be runoff. So you can see how this cover crop practice begins to protect our next tier of buffers and filters in our nutrient cycling site that we showed earlier and then that further helps that site to protect the wetland and then that will in turn protect the water bodies downstream. If you remember before we saw this unprotected site in which the corn has been planted. One thing we want to show, I just showed you how moist the soil was under the cover crop. This has gotten dry, brittle and very, very hard because it has not been protected and the valuable moisture has been lost from the soil. This is one of the most important things we can do for our soils is to provide that cover and keep the moisture here for plant growth and that makes this site function for its productivity much more efficiently than without the cover. The crusting also causes the runoff to occur and it's a real problem here. Now in this corn system we've also begun to use the nutrient cycling aspect. In this site we did not have the clover planted as a cover crop before the corn. That clover provides nitrogen in addition to all the cover crop benefits that we've talked about with the water flow and water regulation part or functioning of the landscape. Let's move over here and look at the clover cover crop that has had the cotton planted and had the corn planted in it. We move over here into the plot of corn that has had the clover cover crop. I've got an example of what the clover looked like from the edge of the field. About a month ago this clover was sprayed chemically and killed and the corn planted into it. Now again this clover provided a lot of nitrogen to get an early boost for this corn in the growing season and it will also reduce the need for commercial fertilizer inputs. One thing to notice here is that in this climate the degradation process begins quite rapidly and if you look at the residue here it's almost gone and will be gone shortly but it's still providing a more moist environment here and you don't see the clumping and clottingness and hardness that you saw in the corn crop without the cover. These microorganisms that are here will begin breaking this down but it's just beginning to get to be a very healthy soil system. This site was taken over by the agriculture research service as a research site about three years ago and had been farmed conventionally until then. So the recovery of this area is just beginning and one of the best ways for soils to begin the recovery process is through the cover crops and the use of complex rotations like we have here with the corn followed by a rye cover followed by cotton which will then be followed by the clover cover crop and then corn all over again. Such a complex system as that varies the rooting types. That type of activity improves the aggregation and it also improves the quality of the soil organic matter to be a fully functioning soil system. Let's use this cover crop to touch on another function that soils and the cropping system that we have here will provide. One of the functions is for productivity and biodiversity. Productivity is simply the ability of this site in this case to produce food and corn in this field. Productivity can also be related to forestry, pasture, hayland, most anything that we use soils for to provide a product or a other type of a productive service for us. The biodiversity portion of this is important not only for the disease protection because many of the microorganisms that are here will also be available to fight any adverse pathogens that land in this area but also these microorganisms like this fungus that is beginning to attack the clover cover crop. This fungus is not harmful to the crop however it does produce fungal hyphae that move down into the soil and begin to promote aggregation. Now aggregation is that term we've talked about already again that allows soil particles to come together and clump together in nice small particles and resist the rainfall impact but also allows for water to move down into a more porous medium and improve the infiltration. These mycorrhizae and fungus and other bacteria are not only important in cropland they're also very important for forest lands. We're going to move down here and look at some of the forest activity and look at some of the biodiversity that is in the forest here adjacent to this plot. Let's move over into the mixed forest we have here of mostly pine with a little bit of hardwoods of sweet gum and oak and look at some of these biodiversity aspects here in the pine straw. When you pull back this pine straw you'll see this white material covering some of the residue, the pine litter residue. This is some more fungus. These will also send out their hyphae and these hyphae will grab nutrients and pull it back to this area and the feeder roots from the trees will be able to access those nutrients. Also in here we might find some beetles and other small organisms that burrow. This burrowing produces macro pores and other pore avenues in which water can move into the soil more readily. Sites like this that have been either replanted or allowed to regenerate have usually been tilled through agriculture and their soil physical properties have been degraded so these processes of aggregation and rooting start breaking up those tillage pans and other things that have happened here over the course of history begin to allow this site to recover somewhat and accept water and a big part of that recovery is due to this fungal activity in the forest litter. Let's move into this soil pit to show some of the processes that occur below the surface and to talk about some of the topics of the day. Currently the biggest topic revolving soil carbon is its ability to reduce greenhouse gases but another aspect of soil carbon is its ability to improve the quality of soil and it's probably the key property of soil that can be done to improve soil quality. What we have in this profile is an illustration and in this research plot we have a rainfall simulation study was done here on a conventional plot after ten years and a no tillage plot after ten years. Both systems had gone under very intense rotations in which five crops were grown in a span of two years three of those being cover crops and two being cotton and corn. What happens in these systems especially in the conventional system is that a tillage pan has formed over the years of conventional tillage and as you can see these roots have stopped at this layer about six inches down which is the depth of annual tillage. This zone here between the subsoil layer the B horizon and this surface A horizon which is probably an E luvial horizon has been compacted over the years through traffic and through tillage. Waterfall that is reaching this site moves down to this layer and is stopping and this area in that we're in is about a one percent slope. The texture of this soil is a loamy sand. Our intuition tells us we shouldn't have no erosion problems whatsoever. However, the rainfall experiment that was a two inch an hour rainfall over an hour long period this soil lost five and a half tons. The no-till soil that had an increase over that ten year period of only six tenths of percent only lost four tenths of a ton of soil loss. So there's a dramatic effect a little bit of soil carbon has had on the ability of this soil to function with respect to regulating water flow. Now with that increase we also had more nutrient holding capacity and it has resulted in slightly even or better yields than the conventional system which is often a knock against the no-till that the yields suffer but this has not occurred because of the intense rotation. So by doing that the water has been able to move through the profile. We do not have this layer that has stopped the water flow down it has also stopped the roots and by these roots stopping here you also are not exploring the rest of the soil matrix for nutrients either. So you're losing both the benefits of the two by having the tillage and the compaction that has occurred with the conventional system and the lack of cover crops and other rooting types breaking up this compacted layer and allowing roots to explore the lower profile. You have seen the Callaway Garden story. We have defined soil quality and the five functions of soil. Now let's consider the impacts of soil management on soil quality. The capacity of soil to recover from minor stresses can be enhanced by improved management. However when disturbances are severe like the Callaway story we can have scores on the landscape for many generations. Now let's look at the individual practices that will affect soil quality. We'll look at erosion control, tillage systems, residue management, additions of organic residues, vegetation management, forestry management, urban management and other management. Erosion is like a silent thief. Here we have pedestals, a remnant of the soil erosion process. Erosion control is essential for improving soil quality in that your soil organic matter and your fines are the first to leave in the erosion process. I want us to think about improving soil quality as having a bucket and the inputs we put in this bucket will improve soil quality. Now when we have erosion I want us to consider it's a leak in the system and as long as we have erosion we're not going to truly improve soil quality. Now let's talk about different types of tillage systems. We'll look at mobile plowing, no-till and other forms of conservation tillage. The mobile plow is the most destructive implement that we have on organic matter. Basically two reasons. First of all it leaves low residue usually less than 3% and it gives us a high potential for erosion. Number two it inverts the soil and this adds oxygen to the exposed soil which increases the decomposition with the microbes. Now any tillage that we have anytime we break up the soil we're going to break and release CO2. The mobile plow is the most destructive because it inverts the soil and it's almost like the soil is burping and this CO2 will come out. You can see in this comparison between mobile plow and no-till CO2 losses are much greater in the mobile plow but any tillage such as chisel or disking will open this up somewhat and we will have losses. Conservation tillage was originally developed for sloping land especially erratic sloping land that would not lend itself to traditional conservation practices like contour farming, contour strip tillage and also contour terracing. However we have learned that conservation tillage is very effective on most sloping land and even level lands. It reduces erosion, it increases organic matter, it improves other soil quality indicators such as aggregate stability, infiltration and available water holding capacity. Here near Pullman, Washington you can see direct seed or no-till spring wheat in wheat residue. It decreases erosion and improves soil quality on soils highly susceptible to erosion and runoff. This slide shows that strip tillage is needed in the southern coastal plain because of reoccurring traffic ponds. A subsoil is used in the row to break up the traffic pan and then it's essential a no-till system. Usually disturbance is four inches or less. Now no-till is the purest form of conservation tillage. No-till because of less operations allows for increased crop intensity. Here we have no-till soybeans and last year's wheat stubble. This provides more intense biomass and we can increase organic matter by growing two crops in one year. Now untraditional no-till crops such as cotton is grown here behind wheat cover. This is the farm of Lamar Black in Georgia. Lamar has raised his organic matter from a half percent to over three percent in the top half inch of the soil. This is especially impressive because it's in the deep south on a very sandy soil. Here we see after the cotton has been picked a wheat or rye has been no-till and on Lamar Black's one thousand acres we have either wheat or rye cover crop on the entire acreage. Other crops that has not been traditionally no-till are vegetables. No-till peppers after cover crop of vetch and rye is here on the Steve Groff's farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Now Steve Groff uses a permanent cover crop system where he grows combinations of rye and vetch and then he mows it with a stalk chopper. He no-tills assortment of vegetables on this 175 acre farm. He has raised his organic matter levels from two and a half percent to well over five percent. There's a good correlation between infiltration rates and the amount of time that a field has been in no-till. Here at Watkinsville, Georgia you can see that as we go past five years even during two hurricane vents of well over five inches of rainfall you can see almost zero runoff. In contrast this field with conventional tillage has high runoff. Conventional tillage destroys soil aggregates, thus removing the ability or reducing the ability of the soil to infiltrate water. Now let's talk about residues. We'll look at residue management, we'll look at residue removal, looking at burning, baling, gleaning and silage operations. We'll also look at the type of crop grown such as low residue, high residue crops and legume crops. Now seasonal residue management utilizes the residue from the previous crop. High amounts of residue are needed to provide erosion protection, especially in the winter and improve soil quality by increasing organic matter levels. It also feeds the soil microbes. Now residue removal as this slide shows used to be predominant in this country. They would destroy the wheat straw in order to turn it under. By reducing the amount of biomass they could easily plow under the wheat residue. Wheat straw is often billed and removed because of the value of the straw. Now how much value is it to leave the straw and to increase organic matter? Maybe increase your cation exchange capacity, better available water holding capacity and higher yields. Residue removal by gleaning. Cattle grazing stubble removes valuable residue. It's not that we can't do these practices but we need to make decisions as farmers to how much to leave and how much to remove. Also if we put cattle on crop fields in the winter time in wet areas we can have some severe compaction problems. Now let's talk about residue removal by silage. Many farms such as dairy farms use silage and they remove most of the surface residues. Grass legume, hay rotations, cover crops are needed to prevent soil degradation in silage systems. A hay crop such as alfalfa when killed in rotation with corn. The corn would be planted in the heavy alfalfa residue. The deep roots build organic matter. It cause macro pores in the soil profile to give us good porosity. It also provides the symbiotic fixed nitrogen source for the corn. Cotton and other low residue crops they need assistance when we want to increase organic matter. We need to grow cover crops and crop rotations because as the Callaway story indicated when we grow just a conventional tillage cotton crop we can degrade the soil. Now lentils in the western United States are a fantastic rotation with small grains. However they are a low residue producing crop and do not need to be grown in a model culture. Crop rotations maintain soil quality with a variety of cool warm season crops, shallow and deep rooted crops, grasses and broadleaf crops and then also legumes. This diversity can increase infiltration, it can increase yields, organic matter and also decrease nutrient leaching and also break pest cycles such as weeds and insects and disease. Also the above ground diversity makes for underground diversity the soil microbes and the earthworms and the orthopods. I'm standing in the field of crimson clover which is a winter annual cover crop and cover crops are one of the most effective conservation practices for improving soil quality. First of all they give this massive cover to give us protection when the raindrop hits the soil so it gives us good erosion control. Another good factor is that it increases organic matter. We hear the term carbon sequestration and carbon sequestration is when the plant takes CO2 from the atmosphere and then when the plant is laid on the ground through a no-till system we can increase carbon or organic matter to the system. Also a crop of crimson clover like this is excellent for wildlife. Now crimson clover being a legume another benefit it will provide is a symbiotic relationship with bacteria the rhizobia bacteria to produce nitrogen from the atmosphere so we can get anywhere from 70 to 150 pounds of nitrogen from a crop of crimson clover. Also it could be a forage with grazing. In a grass situation which we'll be looking at here in a few minutes it can be a catch crop. A catch crop is a cover crop that will literally extract the excess nitrogen from the soil so not only will it improve soil quality where we can cycle back through the cover crops but also it takes any excess nitrogen that may leach into the groundwater. When we do this with a no-till system we would kill this cover crop and it would give us a moisture availability through a short drought time. Also it would smother weeds and in the case of some of the grasses like black oats and rye it gives us the allylopathic properties that is a natural herbicide that not only smothers the weeds but it's got some natural toxins that would kill the weeds as they germinate. Crimson clover will produce anywhere from 3,500 pounds to 5,500 pounds of dry matter per acre and this is excellent in conjunction with no-till in in increasing organic matter. This is an annual rye cover crop and you can see one of the major advantages of rye is the amount of biomass that it will produce in these southern climates going to the maturity where we're actually making a seed here then we could produce somewhere around 10,000 pounds of biomass on the average. It also gives this allylopathic properties that weeds when it's dying and decaying it will give this natural herbicide that will kill out a lot of your weeds. Now this is a plot of turnips or brassicas and brassicas is a unique cover crop in that they will pull up excess nitrogen. They have a taproot and this taproot will grow deep into the soil profile and pull any excess nitrogen that could leach and cause groundwater problems. In the previous one rye being a grass it has a fibrous root system so when we can rotate these cover crops we get the build-up of organic matter through the fibers of a rye cover crop and then a taproot of a legume or a brassica will give us that deep penetration to break tillage pans and also pull up any excess nutrients. As you can see by the bloom we're in a field of white lupin and lupin being a legume it will fix nitrogen. When grown to full maturity it can produce over 300 pounds of nitrogen however at this stage it normally anywhere from 100 to 150 pounds of nitrogen. You can also see it's a good biomass producer so it's going to produce somewhere in the area of five to six thousand pounds of biomass so it's going to give us the good cover for erosion control. Legumes going to help aggregate the soil give us nitrogen for the succeeding plant. I'm now standing in the field of black oats. Black oats is a winter annual however it is susceptible to cold weather so it's normally going to be grown in the southern coastal plain the southern portion of the southern coastal plain. As you can see it's a high biomass producer. It is the national cover crop of brazil. It's grown heavily in the southern portion of brazil. It's grown in rotation with soybeans and a no-till system but black oats have many of the same properties as rye. Not only does it produce about the same biomass maybe a little less than rye it will have the allylopathic properties such as the natural herbicide that I earlier had talked about in rye. So this is an excellent new cover crop being researched in the United States however it's been an old reliable one in South America. Probably one of the more reliable grass cover crops is wheat. Wheat has the excellent potential to catch nutrients. It being a grass it will extract much of the nitrogen from the previous crop. It's a good biomass producer however not as much as black oats and rye but it will produce anywhere from 4,000 pounds to possibly 6,500 pounds and again it's easier to handle maybe than the taller black oats and rye. It's going to be more winter tolerant than the black oats however less winter tolerant than rye. This is the end result of a cover crop used in a no-till system. Here we have white lupin killed and it is contributing to the organic matter. It's given us the moisture savings. It's given us erosion control even on this flat slope. If you look in my hand here this is the conventional tillage soil just adjacent to this site so it's the same soil type. You can see it's very light in color it's almost dried out. It has some soil crust on it and very low in organic matter. In contrast the no-till still high percent sand but you can see it's much darker. It has a lot more moisture. The organic matter is increasing almost 0.2 percent more per year in the no-till cover crop system in comparison to the conventional system. This is some of the newest technology in sustainable no-till systems. This surface here has a real sandy almost like sandpaper surface and it gives an abrasive action when it goes through a high cover crop such as a rye cover crop. It scratches the surface to allow this brush which would have a glyphosate herbicide at a very low rate much lower rate than if we sprayed over the top with conventional nozzles. So we're cutting back the rate of our herbicide use and we're getting kind of more of a natural kill. As we walk around we have this roller device with this angle iron and this literally rose the cover crop in one direction as we showed earlier and also crimps the cover crop giving about an 80 percent kill without herbicides and then with the use of the herbicides having a hundred percent kill. Now let's talk a little bit about grass management. Across the United States we have a lot hayland management where we apply our nutrients and lime based on soil tests. In a grass system we're not depending on the surface residues as much as we are the roots. The roots will give us most of the organic matter and when a grass can be rested that's when the roots are growing into the soil profile they'll die off and that is what increases our organic matter. Now this slide shows poor pasture management. It's a gullied hillside and it's basically due to overgrazing. Not only do we stop the root system of overgrazing but because it's a fragile soil we caused a major erosion problem. Now in contrast proper pasture management meaning bringing in the cattle moving them along using your proper nutrient management clipping and things like that to improve the grass rest the grass you can build soil quality along with organic matter. Now we need to do fencing we need to do rotational grazing to rest this grass to get some of these valuable indicators like water holding capacity good productivity and infiltration all this is usually tied to increasing organic matter. Now rotational grazing is very essential for rangeland management. I want us to think about some of the basic things in rangeland as we talked about in pasture land. The rangelands are much more fragile in that once we overgraze them we can cause bear spots that will cause erosion we can destroy diversity and many times cause a permanent shrub encroachment when it literally replaces the grass and we have lost the grass rangeland forever or for many generations. When we do practices like rotational grazing and we improve the grass whether it's a pasture setting or rangeland setting then we notice not only do we improve soil quality but we also improve the quality of the animals. Here we have rangeland management now once you notice the differences on this slide on the right side you've seen some grazing management on this rangeland you can see there's a lot better cover you can see a little more diversity in grasses on the left side you see a lot of bear areas you see some erosion potential and possibly more encroachment of shrubs as time goes on and this bear areas persist. Now soil quality is affected even more by management when climates are more arid or the resources are more fragile. Now look at this slide here on the left even in this desert climate we still have some grass and vegetation due to resting the grass and having some rotational grazing. We're on the right where we have had a little more severe grazing we have a lot of bear ground and in these arid climates is where we can have shrub encroachment. Now let's talk about pest management. Pesticides can be positive or negative on soil quality. A positive example would be using weed control based on label and following a good rotation system. A negative example would be spraying insecticides anytime you saw a particular insect and we can kill many of our beneficials. We need to think about going crop rotations because crop rotations break the cycles of disease and pest and insects and by rotating these crops and having a good biodiversity both above ground and below ground this breaks a lot of these cycles. Now model culture is hard on the soil in that if you got corn silage you're going to have erosion you're going to have loss of organic matter but also disease you're going to have the diseases that go more toward a grass plant like corn the insects and weeds will follow and so a model culture system destroys biodiversity and also lowers soil quality. Now back in the 1970s soybeans being about $12 a bushel we tended to see a lot of model culture systems in soybeans. Soybeans especially in conventional tillage caused a loss in soil quality due to erosion loss of organic matter but also again the disease and pest problems that we get when we have a model culture system. Now safflower is a deep rooted crop and it removes subsurface water. It's deep rooted and it breaks through layers of compaction. The root system itself when it dies it leaves macropores and gives us good porosity and infiltration and permeability. It also removes excess water in desert climate or arid climate that can help us against saline seeps. Sunflowers are also very helpful in this in that they are deep rooting. Now in drier climates a deep rooted crop removes excess water from recharge areas or seeps. Shallow rooted crops or wheat phyla systems or any system with a phyla does not remove the excess water. So when we have this evaporation the salts are left and we have these saline seeps as you can see in the slide. Now let's talk a little bit about woodland management. Woodland management can maintain soil quality even on soils with limitations such as steep slopes or shallow to rock. Utilizing the same areas for skidding when we have skid trails and harvest operation prevents soil compaction over the entire area. Organic matter needs to be left on the soil surface that is residue from the last harvest. We don't need to burn all the residue we don't need to do a lot of clearing need to utilize that residue for nutrient cycling, preventing erosion and also maintaining organic matter through the system. Cover crops can also be used in some forest situation to give us a temporary cover to provide weed control and also erosion control while the seedlings are maturing. Now buffer areas are needed permanent buffer areas in a woodland setting when we do harvest this protects the water as shown by the slide. The best management use for wetlands is to leave them as they are. You heard Lee Norfleet earlier talk about it being kind of the kidney of the system the filtering and buffering. Also we notice when we leave wetlands alone we have the enhancement of wildlife. Urban conservation is essential for improving soil quality in urban settings. We have many of the same problems in urban setting we have erosion we have soil compaction when we remove soil due to construction and we don't account for leaving areas in topsoil then the next owner will come into the new dwelling and the soils will be mostly clay with no topsoil. They'll wonder why the grass is not growing or the soil is not functioning. They'll irrigate their yard water will run simply out in the road they'll have to fertilize more often because there's not much nutrient cycling going on. So when we degrade these soils in urban setting then we almost have to intravenously feed these soils we've got to give them water all the time we've got to give them nutrients all the time and so the soils are just not functioning. One unique problem in urban settings especially in these heavy populated areas where a lot of people take their pets there can be high salts built up due to feces and urine from taking the pets in the same area. Here we have an example of removing all the vegetation during construction. You can see massive amount of erosion taking place. You can see also the function of structural support is in danger because of the poor development practice and the housing that they're abiding is almost going to fall over because of lack of structural support. Now irrigation management including timing application rates and amount of water applied is very important in maintaining soil quality. Now we increase soil quality with irrigation in that we increase the biomass produced. However if we can do good practices in irrigation systems such as using cover crops crop rotations and even no-till or reduced tillage we can improve the organic matter increase the organic matter improve aggregate stability when we do that. We use less water and also we're more efficient with our water so conservation practices are needed in an irrigation system just like they would in a non-irrigated system. livestock waste applications and nutrient management they are also needing when we apply nutrients like livestock waste we need to consider nitrogen and phosphorus balance. Most crops or most plants in general take up about 10 times more nitrogen than they do phosphorus. When we apply animal manure based on nitrogen needs we can build up the soil phosphorus levels to very high. Now phosphorus levels especially when they get into our surface water can cause eutrophication that is the enrichment of the waters which can lower our water quality. Livestock waste utilization when done properly though can provide us nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur they increase organic matter they feed the microbial and earthworm populations they increase the aggregate stability so if a good livestock application can increase soil quality and then finally we want to talk about maybe the last line of defense other than the wetlands would be buffers and vegetated strips. The role of buffers is to reduce the the soil losses or the sediments getting into our streams and water courses filtering chemical runoff and improving water quality so it takes on the function of filtering and buffering. In summary we want to talk about improving soil quality is basically leaving our vegetation growing as long as possible regardless of land use. If it's crop land sitting let's try to grow cover crops let's have crop rotations both high low residue crops legumes and grasses. Let's also provide the diversity that gives us the the above ground diversity and the below ground diversity. We need to rest grazing lands whether it's rangeland or pastureland to allow those roots to grow and improve soil quality through increasing organic matter. We need good proper nutrient management to protect our water quality. We need to do good management with our livestock waste utilization again to improve soil but also improve water quality and air quality. We need to prevent erosion and compaction on our land uses whether it's urban or whether it's a crop land setting or whatever and then we need to use our filter and buffer strips as the last line of defense. I'd like to leave with you today basically as we increase organic matter we improve soil quality. Mike talked about several general principles about soil management practices that improve soil quality but the specifics of how you apply these practices to your situation depends on the specific soils and land uses that you're working on so it's important to monitor and assess soil quality to understand what effect your management practices are having on the soil. In an ideal world there would be one test that would tell us how the soil is functioning but soil processes are too complex for that so instead we measure indicators that give us clues about how well the soil is functioning. For example we'll test soil aggregate stability and that gives us clues about how the water is infiltrating across a whole field. Soil tests range from simple soil health cards that involve observing visually observing soil condition to test kits such as this to very systematic quantitative laboratory tests and the choice of which tests you use depends on the customer you're working with the land uses and the goals of the whole assessment procedure. Assessment and monitoring are two different tasks. Assessment is estimating the functional status of the soil. Assessments can help target management inputs, identify areas at risk of degradation, compare management systems, or to select sites that can be used for long-term monitoring. An assessment must start with choosing a standard for comparison. Standards for comparison may include ecological site descriptions, soil survey data, or a nearby area with the same type of soil but a different management system. Monitoring on the other hand is tracking trends in soil function. It involves the orderly collection and analysis of soil data. Monitoring is used to evaluate and document progress towards management goals. We started this video at Callaway Gardens where we saw that even in a beautiful garden we can see the effect of long-term management choices. Now we're in Auburn Alabama at the old rotation, the oldest cotton experiment in the world where we can see the effects of 100 years of management choices. This is another reminder that our management decisions we make today will last for generations to come. It is also good to note that no matter what land use that you use or whatever management practice you select is that nothing good happens to bare soil and bare soil provides us nothing good.