Linking Agricultural Management Practices to Carbon Cycling Traits: Implications for Soil Health Assessment

September 16, 2026

Location

Online

Presenters

Elizabeth Rieke
Soil Microbiome Scientist and Program Director·
Soil Health Institute, USA

Outline

Many scientists are exploring the potential of functional genes as indicators of soil health. Using data from the North American Project to Evaluate Soil Health Measurements, we evaluated how increasing living root presence and reducing tillage intensity influence functional traits associated with carbon cycling genes.

While most widely adopted soil health indicators tend to improve as soil health management practices are adopted to greater degrees, this pattern was not consistently observed for carbon cycling traits. Increasing the duration of living roots significantly enhanced traits related to complex carbohydrate depolymerization but had no effect on carbohydrate transport traits. In addition, reducing physical soil disturbance did not produce a linear increase in either depolymerization or transport traits.

Given these complex and non-linear responses, we are investigating how more established soil health indicators may help interpret carbon cycling traits and their usefulness as indicators of soil health.