Tracking Soil Health: Monitoring and Modeling the Soil-Plant System

The assessment of soil health has evolved from a focus on agricultural productivity to a more integrated evaluation that includes soil biota and biotic processes. This shift has led to the incorporation of ecological, biological, and molecular methods in soil health assessments, allowing for a deeper understanding of soil microbial communities and their responses to environmental changes. Despite the availability of various soil health indicators, a comprehensive linkage between these indicators and soil functions across different scales is still lacking. The article reviews current soil health monitoring methods, emphasizing the role of soil-microbiome-plant interactions in soil property changes and functions. It also explores the potential of the soil-plant digital twin approach, which combines various advanced technologies to better understand and monitor soil health. The review highlights gaps in current knowledge and suggests directions for future research to improve the understanding of the complex relationships between soil properties, processes, and microbiomes.

The paper is also available on the ESS Open Archive website.