Assessing Sustainability of Land Management Using a Risk Identification Model

New Zealand is highly dependent on its soil resource for continued agricultural production.To avoiddepleting this resource,there is a need to identify soils and associated land management practices wherethere is a risk of soil degradation.Environmental integrity and ecosystem services also need to be maintained.Accordingly,to ensure sustainable production,the on-and off-site environmental impacts of land managementneed to be identified and managed.We developed a structural vulnerability index for New Zealand soils.Thisindex ranks soils according to their inherent susceptibility to physical degradation when used for agricultural(pasture,forestry and cropping)purposes.We also developed a rule-based model to assess soil compactionvulnerability by characterising the combined effects of resistance and resilience. Other soil attributes havebeen appraised using seven chemical,Physical and biological indicators of soil quality.These indicators havebeen applied in a nation-wide project involving data collection