Improving soil health is critical to reversing trends of soil degradation and is of increasing interest to a range of stakeholders including policymakers, agricultural industry leaders, food companies, and farmers. Crop and soil management practices focused on ecological functions can be effective in restoring fundamental biological, chemical and physical soil properties. The call for ecological intensification of agricultural systems has the potential to improve soil health and input-use efficiency. In this study, we developed a framework to classify spatial and temporal ecological intensification with soil health practices: tillage, crop rotation, cover crop, organic amendment, and crop-livestock integration. We applied this framework in a statewide soil health project featuring collaboratively designed on-farm research. We found that ecological intensification affected all properties commonly used in soil health assessments, but the sensitivity of different practices to impact changes varied among the soil physical, chemical and biological properties. The use of cover crops had the greatest impact on driving changes in soil properties, in particular those closely related to organic matter and carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics. Soil-test biological activity and its association with soil-test predicted N release in cropping systems intensified with cover crop use was found to reduce predicted nutrient fertility needs substantially compared to less intensified systems. Evaluating the potential of existing agricultural systems to undergo ecological intensification at a farm scale provides insights about management options to enhance soil health, particularly in regards to nutrient cycling, biological activity, and input-use efficiency.

改善土壤健康对于扭转土壤退化趋势至关重要，并且越来越引起包括政策制定者、农业行业领导者、食品公司和农民在内的一系列利益相关者的兴趣。以生态功能为重点的作物和土壤管理实践可以有效地恢复土壤的基本生物、化学和物理特性。农业系统生态集约化的呼吁有可能改善土壤健康和投入使用效率。在这项研究中，我们开发了一个框架，通过土壤健康实践对时空生态集约化进行分类：耕作、轮作、覆盖作物、有机改良剂和作物-牲畜整合。我们将此框架应用于全州范围的土壤健康项目，该项目以协作设计的农场研究为特色。我们发现生态集约化影响了土壤健康评估中常用的所有特性，但不同做法对影响变化的敏感性因土壤物理、化学和生物特性而异。覆盖作物的使用对推动土壤特性变化的影响最大，特别是那些与有机质和碳 (C) 和氮 (N) 动态密切相关的特性。土壤测试生物活性及其与土壤测试预测的氮释放的关联被发现，与不那么集约化的系统相比，在使用覆盖作物强化的种植系统中，可显着降低预测的养分肥力需求。评估现有农业系统在农场规模上进行生态集约化的潜力，提供有关增强土壤健康的管理选择的见解，