Organic Amendments in Soil Health and Management
Summary
Organic amendments—including composts, manures, biosolids and green waste—play a pivotal role in restoring and maintaining soil quality across agricultural and natural landscapes. By supplying organic matter and a suite of nutrients, these inputs improve soil structure, increase water‐holding capacity, enhance cation exchange capacity and foster diverse microbial communities. The accumulation of soil organic carbon (SOC) under repeated amendment is fundamental to nutrient cycling, aggregate stability and climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. Practical applications range from improving crop productivity and resilience under drought to remediating degraded rangelands and mine‐affected soils. Effective management requires attention to amendment composition, application rate and site characteristics in order to balance benefits—including enhanced fertility and soil–water relations—against potential risks, such as greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient leaching and pollutant accumulation. Interdisciplinary approaches that integrate siting strategies, hydrological modelling, microbial indicators and long‐term monitoring are now informing best practices for sustainable amendment use at scales from field plots to regional waste diversion schemes.
Research from Nature Portfolio
No recent Nature Portfolio content available.
Organic Amendments in Soil Health and Management publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in organic amendments in soil health and management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Organic amendment: Addition of organic materials such as compost, manure or biosolids to soil to enhance fertility and structure.
Soil organic carbon (SOC): Carbon fraction of soil organic matter, central to nutrient retention and carbon sequestration.
Bulk density: Mass of dry soil per unit volume, used to assess compaction and porosity.
Cation exchange capacity (CEC): Soil’s ability to retain and exchange positively charged ions, influencing nutrient availability.
Water retention curve: Relationship between soil moisture content and matric potential, indicating water‐holding capacity and pore‐size distribution.
References
- Site Suitability and Air Pollution Impacts of Composting Infrastructure for California’s Organic Waste Diversion Law. Environmental Science and Technology (2024).
- Exploring plant and soil microbial communities as indicators of soil organic carbon in a California rangeland. Soil Biology and Biochemistry (2023).
- Compost Amendment Impact on Soil Physical Quality Estimated from Hysteretic Water Retention Curve. Water (2022).
Turn complex research questions into confident strategic decisions
When you're under pressure to set direction, justify investment, or understand your competitive position, you need more than raw data — you need trusted insights you can act on.
Benchmark your performance against global peers using robust, methodologically sound analysis.
Combine quantitative metrics with qualitative expert insight to uncover strengths, gaps and emerging opportunities.
Gain tailored, decision-ready recommendations aligned to your strategic priorities.
Talk to us to learn more about our data dashboards and bespoke strategy reports.
Grow research skills, confidence and careers with training built for every stage of the research lifecycle.
Developed with Nature Portfolio journal Editors and internationally renowned experts. Discover three ways to learn:
Self-paced, online courses in convenient bite-sized units, covering key skills across scientific writing, publishing, grant writing, data analysis, and more.
Expert trainer-led workshops with hands-on exercises and real-time feedback across core research skills, delivered via interactive group sessions.
Editor-led workshops combining core principles in writing and publishing, personalised 1:1 feedback from Nature Portfolio Editors and hands-on exercises.
Explore course catalogues and workshop agendas, enquire about the options or request institutional pricing.