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1. Introduction
This workbook was made in response to
listening sessions conducted in 2019/2020
that discussed barriers to adopting
management that would improve soil health
in New Mexico. A paradox emerged: people
reported not having enough information
about soil health to make management
changes, and people reported that they were
overwhelmed by the amount of information
available and could not sift through all of the
information to make good decisions for their
own context. This workbook is our attempt
to address that paradox - we have focused
only on dryland soils so that the information
is regionally relevant with less extraneous
information/photos/considerations from other
parts of the country. Additionally, we have
worked with a broad group of agency and
non-profit collaborators to make sure that the
information is consistent across many of the
people who are working in soil health in the
region. At the same time, we consider both
crop and rangeland systems and what can be
beneficial for both.
Our goal is to raise awareness of soil health
and support management that will increase
the resilience and productivity of working
lands. We want to bring whole systems
thinking to the spatial (from clay particles
to acres) and temporal (from seconds to
centuries) scales that interact to form and
transform soil ecosystems. And we encourage
readers of this workbook to observe how
parts of the soil ecosystem respond to
management and how others are generally
unchanging within the human timescale. We
will explore the exciting challenge of working
within constraints imposed by soil ecosystems
to support resilient and productive working
landscapes throughout the Intermountain
West. We denote our particular focus on
New Mexico and Colorado with this
icon, but the information will be
relevant for similar soil types and climates.
Because soil is such a dynamic system,
holistic understanding of physical, chemical,
biological, and management interactions are
crucial, and the same concepts arise over and
over again in different parts of this workbook.
For example, how much organic matter is
present affects how water moves through soil;
feeds back on by soil microbial activity; and
can be affected by management.