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19 February 2019 Soil health indicators after 21 yr of no-tillage in south coastal British Columbia
Ben W. Thomas, Derek Hunt, Shabtai Bittman, Kirsten D. Hannam, Aimé J. Messiga, Dennis Haak, Mehdi Sharifi, Xiying Hao
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Abstract

The lower Fraser Valley is one of the most intensively cropped regions in Canada. Yet, how soil health indicators respond to long-term intensive agricultural management is poorly documented in this region. Thus, we evaluated a suite of soil health indicators in response to 21 growing seasons of continuous silage corn (Zea mays L.) under conventional tillage or no-tillage (0–20 cm soil layer). Wet aggregate stability, available water capacity, active carbon (permanganate oxidizable, POXC), and extractable potassium and extractable magnesium were significantly greater with no-till than conventional tillage, whereas 8 of 13 indicators were similar. Soil health indicators responded more favourably to no-till than conventional tillage.

© Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada as represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 2019. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Ben W. Thomas, Derek Hunt, Shabtai Bittman, Kirsten D. Hannam, Aimé J. Messiga, Dennis Haak, Mehdi Sharifi, and Xiying Hao "Soil health indicators after 21 yr of no-tillage in south coastal British Columbia," Canadian Journal of Soil Science 99(2), 222-225, (19 February 2019). https://doi.org/10.1139/cjss-2018-0146
Received: 20 November 2018; Accepted: 13 February 2019; Published: 19 February 2019
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KEYWORDS
active carbon
available water capacity
POXC
soil quality
wet aggregate stability
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