Soil Health Assessment

Healthy soils are living soils, and soil life is carbon and stores carbon. Diverse soil organisms use carbon to form their bodies and to form complex carbon molecules that create pores and support diverse habitats in the soil. As soil organisms build their own habitats and participate in communities with plants, they manage nutrients, water, and carbon in the soil, buffer against drought and flooding rains, and keep plants healthy and all life more resilient. The greater the health and diversity of life in the soil, the more carbon it will hold and the more resilient our land systems will be in weather extremes. 
 
The Soil Carbon Proxy Tests use quantitative and qualitative metrics to give an overall assessment of the level of biodiversity and biological activity in the soil, which can be used as a proxy to assess soil carbon levels. These tests will help you get an idea of how well your soils are supporting life and storing carbon. Of course, soils are complex and not easy to compare to each other, but variations in the same plot of soil over time can provide meaningful information about the impact of management practices. One day of tests will provide some indicators of soil health and provide the land manager with a snapshot of the tested area and recommendations for addressing resource concerns. Repeated annual tests (or even every other year) will provide information about change over time and allow the land manager to see the impact of their growing practices on soil health outcomes. 
 
We’ll come to your site to run a comprehensive series of field tests for you. After the visit, we will send you the results of the tests and our analysis of what the data means in terms of your soil health and relative carbon levels. We will also provide you with recommendations tailored to your site, results, and goals. For more info, or to bring us to your site, please email soilhealth@nofamass.org