Land management practices that build more resilient soils

Healthy soil is a living system driven by microbial communities that break down organic matter, cycle nutrients and maintain soil function. When these communities are disrupted by stress, such as drought, soil function declines and recovery can be slow. Soils with higher organic matter, better structure and greater nutrient availability tend to cope better and recover more quickly.

Management practices such as cover cropping and minimum tillage can build soil carbon and improve soil condition over time. However, there is still limited understanding of how these practices influence a soil’s ability to resist stress and recover once conditions improve, and under what circumstances they are most likely to deliver results.

Dr Mehran Rashti from Griffith University led a Soil CRC project (4.1.005) that examined how land management practices affect soil resilience, with the goal of identifying which practices build more resilient soils and under what conditions they are most likely to benefit farmers.

Speaking with sustainable agriculture facilitator Aimee Moritz on Wheatbelt NRM’s ‘Get the Dirt’ podcast, Dr Rashti explained that the project used the concept of soil resistance (the ability of soil to maintain its function under stress) and resilience (how quickly it recovers once that stress is removed) to assess the changes to soil health in long-term Soil CRC field sites.

“We were looking for management practices that were already implemented for a couple of years,” he said.

“In these management practices, the claim is that they can improve yield in good years, but are these management practices resilient to the decline of yield if we are dealing with a bad year?

“We wanted to see how the function of soil microbial communities can resist against these stresses and can be resilient and bounce back if this stress is removed.”