Soil Health Basics

• NRCS Soil Health Definition
• Bringing it all together: soil health – Learn the principles of soil health and the basic ways that you can manage, improve, and measure the health of your soil (website).
• Cover Cropping for Soil Health – An overall guide to improving soil health with cover crops, including a case study from a 600-acre organic farm (Extension Publication).
• Ecosystem Services from Cover Crops (website) 
• Evaluating Forage Cover Crop Mixes for the Desert Southwest (Extension Publication) 
• Building Healthy Soils with Water-Smart Cover Crops (video) 
• Cover Crops and Soil Health with Ray Archuleta (video) 
• Winter cover cropping to improve soil health in semiarid, irrigated cropping systems of Central Oregon (Scientific Journal) 
• NRCS Case Studies:
  • Analysis of Soil Health Properties in California Prune Orchard -Cover crops were used to assess soil-health related attributes under three prune orchard floor treatments including cover crops, resident vegetation, and disked-clean floor management (article)
  • Soil Health Improvements in a Walnut Orchard using Cover Crops – Cover crops were used in this orchard to improve infiltration, build soil organic matter, and reduce runoff using for cover crop treatments (article)