Soil resilience: A fundamental component of soil quality

Soil resilience has recently been introduced into soil science to address s ustainability of the soil resource and to combat sail degradation. The conc ept of soil resilience and its relationship to soil quality have not been w ell defined or well developed, The main objectives of this paper are to cla rify the concept: of soil resilience and its relationship to soil quality a nd to present a framework for its assessment. A review of the literature on the assessment and quantification of soil resilience is presented and disc ussed, The concept of soil resilience in combination with resistance is pre sented as an important component of soil quality, a key element of sustaina bility. Factors that affect soil resilience and resistance are soil type an d vegetation, climate, land use, scale, and disturbance regime. Maintenance of recovery mechanisms after a disturbance is critical for system recovery . Three approaches for assessing soil resilience are presented: (i) directl y measuring recovery after a disturbance, (ii) quantifying the integrity of recovery mechanisms after a disturbance, and (iii) measuring properties th at serve as indicators of those recovery mechanisms. Research is needed in the development of indicators or quantitative measures of the ability of so ils to recover from specific disturbances.