Cropping system management responses to Cornell and Alabama soil health assessment methods in the southeastern United States

Soil health assessment is very important for evaluating agroecosystem sustainability from the adoption of conservation management practices. Unfortunately, a universal standardized soil health test is not yet available despite the development of several regional and commercial methods. Some regionally developed methods have been applied across diverse agroecological regions, but this practice requires further scrutiny. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of two regionally focused methods— the Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health (CASH), a well‐established method and the Alabama Soil Health Index (ASHI), a recently developed method—to assess soil health of row‐cropping systems in the southeastern United States. By leveraging three ongoing cropping system experiments, that is (a) continuous soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] (SS), (b) corn (Zea mays L.)–soybean (CS) rotation, and (c) continuous cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) (CC) systems, soil health indicators included in CASH and ASHI methods were analyzed, and soil health scores were calculated. Our test criteria depended on the sensitivity of CASH and ASHI methods to differentiate long‐term management‐induced changes in these systems. In general, we found that the overall soil health scores of both CASH and ASHI did not strongly differentiate diverse tillage, cover crops, or N rate treatments. The scores for both conventional and conservation management treatments were rated as low to medium (scores <60) with CASH method and medium to high (scores >50) with ASHI method. Overall, these soil health approaches were not found to be sensitive enough to detect management‐induced changes in soil health in various cropping systems of the southeastern United States. Our results highlight the need for extensive calibration and validation of CASH, ASHI, and similar approaches prior to wider adoption across agroecological regions.