Soil health (SH) degradation is primarily the result of degradative anthropogenic activities such as nutrient mining, aggressive tillage, and monocropping, and has over time reduced the capacity of agricultural soil to function within ecosystem and land use boundaries, to sustain productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant and animal health. A comprehensive, quantifiable soil health characterization of agronomically important soil functions provides the basis for remedial soil health management. Twenty-nine randomly selected catchments in six districts of Jharkhand, India yielded 133 soil samples used by the Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health (CASH) framework to establish a holistic understanding of SH beyond nutrient balance and management. Each catchment was stratified into four management ordered landscape positions including uncultivated, upland, and terraced middle and lowland rice-fallow paddy fields. Textures as well as dynamic physical, biological, and chemical factors were assessed, with uncultivated landscape positions contrasting the degradative effects of farmer management in the remaining landscape positions. General nutrient comparisons indicate low to very low P and K values contrasted with high micronutrient levels. A district level ANOVA shows the effects of inherent textural factors and parent material contributing on dynamic physical, biological, and chemical indicators. The degradative influence of management activities such as tillage and insufficient nutrient management on the dynamic soil indicators are seen in landscape position assessment, with the uncultivated soils having higher overall SH scores.
Aggressive paddy tillage separated the surface (0 to 15 cm) and subsurface (30 to 40 cm) assessment, with subsurface results showing significantly reduced water holding capacity and less favorable biological indicators. A best subsets regression reveals three indicators as the most predictive in determining SH scores: organic matter content, soil respiration and active carbon, having an R2-adj = 87%.