Assessing Ecosystem Responses to Land-Use Changes by Soil Quality Index

The change in land use from natural land regarding land used by humans in various areas is critical to the global ecosystem, which in turn affects soil conditions. In order to improve our understanding of land use, our study focuses on soil health assessment and it depends on long-term environmental research area near Wadi Nar in Al-Ubeidiya to assess the ecosystem response to land use, including tillage practice. The aim of this study is to evaluate of the effects of tillage on soil health for each system (natural, pastoral A, pastoral B) by using soil quality index. Three systems are studied: natural (no tillage), tillage with the removal of plants (pastoral A) and tillage without the removal of plants (pastoral B). In order to assess soil health, the chemical, biological and physical parameters of the soil must be analyzed. During our study, soil quality is assessed using the method of registration in each index using the SQI soil quality index, which determines the level of soil degradation, by collecting data on selected chemical, physical and biological indicators for each soil. Numerous statistical calculations were performed, including the PCA analysis, which shows the correlation between transactions in all systems at a given depth. Soil health assessment was used in detail for each laboratory of chemical, physical and biological indicators based on Cornell's book. The result of soil quality index for natural land is 16, where a number of indicators have been adopted to determine the quality of the soil. The pastoral system A achieves 15.4 while pastoral B has the highest value of 16.3. The result shows that according to the soil quality index, management types including tillage and plant retention, can improve soil quality. The higher the values are, the better the soil quality is. The best soil quality index in our study is 39 and the lowest value is 10 based on the equation used to calculate the soil quality index