A Soil Health Partnership with an Emphasis on Rangelands and Forestlands of the Basin and Range.

NRCS in Nevada is developing a Soil Health Partnership with USFS, BLM and the Desert Research Institute to measure and communicate the economic and environmental benefits of different soil management strategies and provide a set of regionally specific, data-driven recommendations that managers can use to improve the productivity and sustainability of our Rangeland, Forest and Agricultural lands. Using a standard protocol developed primarily for Agricultural lands in addition to more rigorous observations of infiltration, hydrophobicity, microbial ecology, and soil structure we compare paired disturbed and undisturbed sites in several different biogeographic zones within the Basin and Range.  As an entry point in our understanding of soil health, any measured soil constraint can be taken as a management target. When multiple constraints are considered together, a management plan can be developed to restore functionality to the soil. Effective users of the soil health information will realize that implementation of a single practice can affect more than one indicator and benefit multiple soil functional processes in disturbed sites and help to improve sustainability and restoration of disturbed systems.