Main authors: Abdallah Alaoui and Gudrun Schwilch
Editor: Jane Brandt
Source document: Alaoui, A. and Schwilch, G. (2016) Soil quality and agricultural management practices inventory at case study sites.  iSQAPER Report  28 pp

 

Importance

Soil pH is a measure of its acidity or alkalinity and is an important property because of its influence on the supply of nutrients (cations and anions) to plants, the chemical behaviour of toxic elements and the activity of microorganisms. There are two standard laboratory tests; using water (pH H2O) and using 0.01M calcium chloride (pH CaCl2), both of which use a 1:5 soil to solution ratio. Because these two methods give different values, we suggest using pH H2O.

VSA fig09

Assessment

Assessing pH has to be carried out with a pH kit.

Scoring

Good condition: Score 2

5.5 – 7.5

Moderate condition: Score 1

< 5.5 or > 7.5

Poor condition: Score 0

< 4.5 or > 8

 


References

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/soil2/soil2/indicators.html  (Adapted)

 

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