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Did you know that your soil can impact local water sources?
Waterways play a vital role in every habitat, including yours. Crops, wildlife and the surrounding land depend on healthy streams.
One of the most effective ways to promote stream health is to start with good on-farm soil health practices. When your soil is balanced it provides an environment that sustains and nourishes the world around it, including local waterways.
Why soil?
As a farmer, you know that your soil is made up of many essential elements that work together to create a living ecosystem. This system sustains plants, animals and humans both now and into the future. Soil organic matter (SOM) is the key to healthy soil. SOM improves its structure, making it more porous. This allows air and water to move more freely, which in turn protects local water sources.
Everyone Benefits from Local Stream Health
Why does stream health matter? The fact is, when local water sources are stable, animals, people and the land itself all benefit.
Both land and aquatic animals depend on local water sources. When streams are stable, they serve as an important ecosystem that animals need to survive. Healthy streams provide both food and shelter for aquatic animals, such as insects, fish and amphibians. They also help to create a suitable habitat for local wildlife, including pollinators.
A healthy stream means cleaner water, which in turn lowers the cost to treat local sources for drinking with expensive chemicals. Groundwater, another important source of drinking water, and is more plentiful when good soil leads to healthy streams. Plus, people can enjoy swimming, boating and fishing in healthy waterways.
Healthy streambanks with trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants can protect the adjacent land. Roots help to stabilize the soil which, over time, develops the capacity to hold more water. This can protect nearby crops and livestock from drought and flooding. Woody debris extending into the waterway from streamside vegetation reduces water flow and prevents erosion. Together, these factors help to increase adjacent property values.
How to Get Started
The key to healthy soil is an increase in soil organic matter, or SOM. SOM affects several critical functions that benefit plants, animals and humans. To increase your SOM:
Protect the Soil
Minimize disturbance – SOM is highest at the surface, so protect it from degrading forces with no-till practices and rotational livestock grazing systems.
Maximize soil cover – Use cover crops to slow erosion and evaporation and promote water retention.
Feed the Soil
Maximize biodiversity – Increase the diversity of soil animals and microorganisms with energy and carbon inputs and above-ground plants and animals that can break disease cycles, provide for pollinators and stimulate plant growth.
Maximize presence of living roots – Cover crops, crop rotation, and dedicated grasslands work to strengthen the soil and break disease/pest cycles.
Healthy soil leads to healthy streams, something everyone benefits from.
To learn more about how to promote local stream health with good soil, sign up below.
Read More Related East Cost Soil Health Articles Here
- Healthy Soil Matters
- Make The Most of Good Soil
