ASSESSING SOIL QUALITY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PURPOSES - ROLES AND CHALLENGES FOR SOIL SCIENTISTS

Soil quality is emerging as an issue of vital importance to the use an d management of land, water, and air. Clearly, we must maintain soils in a clean state that is suitable for agriculture, that minimizes the pollution of water and air, and that allows for the safe and productiv e use of wastes and by-products as soil amendments. We must also remed iate many unclean soils that have been severely impacted by anthropoge nic activities. It can be argued that to sensibly approach these compl ex tasks we must first begin to develop a consensus on the proper mean s to assess soil quality from an environmental perspective. In doing s o we must recognize that conceptual and mechanistic interpretations of soil quality will vary with the intended use of the land and will not always be the same for nonagricultural and agricultural systems. Meas ures of soil quality important for environmentally sound agronomic cro p production will not always be the most appropriate for contaminated soils where cost-effective remediation is often the primary objective. This paper raises some fundamental questions about the changing role of soil scientists who now must contribute more than ever to the resea rch, technology transfer, and public policy critical to soil and envir onmental quality. The need for soil scientists to take a proactive rol e in framing, from all perspectives, the debate on soil quality and en vironmental issues is emphasized, as is the need for new approaches to quantify the environmental risks posed by soils in agricultural and n onagricultural settings.