Investigating soil pH

What is pH? Why does soil pH play such a pivotal role for soil and plant health? And how can we measure it? This video introduces soil pH as a key soil health indicator and provides an overview of the laboratory procedure used for its determination. Soil pH influences crop nutrient availability, microbial activity, and a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological processes in the soil. Understanding and accurately measuring soil pH is therefore essential for reliable soil health assessments. This film has been developed as part of an EU soil's mission project called AI4SoilHealth. The project endeavours to accelerate the collection and use of soil health information using AI technology. The video series, produced by the Institute of Geo-Hydroinformatics at Hamburg University of Technology, aims to train the next generation of soil scientists by explaining the standard procedures required to quantify soil health indicators. AI4SoilHealth is a project funded by the European Union. To find out more, visit https://ai4soilhealth.eu/. Further resources: FAO. (2021). Standard operating procedure for soil pH determination. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy. https://openknowledge.fao.org/handle/... ISO 10390:2021: Soil, treated biowaste and sludge – Determination of pH. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland. Smith, J. L., & Doran, J. W. (1997). Measurement and Use of pH and Electrical Conductivity for Soil Quality Analysis. In J. W. Doran & A. J. Jones (Eds.), SSSA Special Publications (1st ed., Vol. 49, pp. 169–185). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.2136/sssaspecpub49... USDA. (2011). Soil quality indicators – Soil pH. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service. https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/conservatio...