Markstrukturindex

To guarantee safe and secure food production in the future we are dependent on farming systems which maintain good soil quality and fertility, The physical condition of our soils, which is an important parameter when discussing soil quality and fertility, has degenerated in the last decades, One of the main reasons for this degeneration is the development of Swedish agriculture which has lead to larger machines, more specialised units, less variation in crop rotations etc, This has lead to a growing need to be able to define and measure soil fertility and quality, Researcher (PhD) Kerstin Berglund and professor emeritus Waldemar Johansson at the Department of Soil Science, Swedish University of Agriculture have developed a soil structure index, The index is a way to estimate the sustainability of farming systems and the physical status of the soils, The index consists of three different parts, One part evaluates long term effects of land improvement measures, one takes annual farming practises in consideration and the last part is a soil structure test applied in the field. The purpose of this Master degree is to evaluate the soil structure index and its different parts, This evaluation of the index have been done according to two main principles. In the first part the influence of one distinct parameter on soil structure was evaluated. All other parameters remained the same. In the second part two different farming systems where several parameters differed were analysed and compared. Results from the evaluation lead to the conclusion that the soil structure index works well. Index results also correlated well with field and laboratory results, This shows that it is possible to evaluate the effect different farming systems have on soil structure, without using expensive and time-consuming field and laboratory methods. Index and field-tests do not give an exact diagnosis on soils physical status but a hint on how the farming system will affect soil structure on a long term basis.