A Morphology Index for Soil Quality Evaluation of Near-Surface Mineral Horizons

We present a soil quality morphological index for the uppermost 30 cm that combines structure, rupture resistance, dry crust strength and thickness, and surfaceconnected macropores. Raindrop impact crust reduces the index and surface-connected macropores or cracks increases the index as depth increases. A number is obtained between 0 and 100. The soil is at or above field capacity. Properties are each placed in one of 5 classes of soil quality. Rupture resistance compared to structure is more important for coarser textures. An index is computed for each 10 cm subzone. The 0-30 cm index is based on weighting the 10 cm zones 4, 2 and 1 with increasing depth.