Pastureland Sheet 2 

Soil Quality Information Sheet

Pastureland Soil Quality 

Indicators for Assessment and Monitoring 

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service July 2003 

What are indicators? 

Indicators are key soil or plant community 

characteristics that are measurable and are sensitive to 

change in management practices or the environment. 

Trends in condition can be interpreted from regularly 

measured indicators that provide clues about the response 

of the system to management. Environmental factors, such 

as time since the last rainfall, can affect some indicators 

and should be considered when the effects of management 

are interpreted. 

What indicators are used on 

pastureland? 

Soil properties.—Physical, biological, and chemical 

soil properties are included. Some physical properties, 

such as bulk density and soil strength, reflect limitations to 

root growth, seedling emergence, and water infiltration. 

Chemical properties, including plant nutrients, organic 

matter, cation-exchange capacity, base saturation, and pH, 

directly affect plant production and the ability of the 

plants to provide soil cover. Soil organisms, such as 

earthworms, are also soil properties. Some of these are 

beneficial organisms, but some are harmful, including 

insect larvae and nematodes that can reduce or destroy 

forage stands or infect livestock. Organic matter in the soil 

and the aggregate stability of the soil reflect a combination 

of physical, biological, and chemical processes. 

Soil surface features. —Pedestals, exposed plant roots, 

rills, gullies, wind scours, terracettes, penetration 

resistance, stoniness, and soil or plant residue movement 

and deposition (debris dams or windrows after major 

storms) reflect such processes as runoff and erosion. 

These indicators are commonly assessed qualitatively. 

Vegetative features.—Such features as plant cover, 

desirable species, plant residue, plant vigor, and species 

diversity are indicators that reflect the makeup and 

vegetation cycling of the current plant community. 

Management factors.—Visibly evident features, such 

as uniformity of plant removal, excessive use areas, 

adaptation of the pastureland species, plant stress resulting 

from insects or disease, and currently modified soil 

fertility and pH, help to determine the effects of 

management on the site. Often, these are the primary 

causes for changes in soil quality. 

Environmental conditions.—The level of 

physiological stress exhibited by the plants results partly 

from the weather and other environmental conditions of 

the site at the time of the assessment. 

Spatial patterns and variability.— Landscape 

position, erosion, and deposition affect the distribution 

and cycling of water and nutrients in pastured soils. 

Nutrient distribution is affected by the kinds, amounts, and 

spatial distribution of living plants and decaying residue 

on the soil. As the distribution of soil organic matter and 

animal waste becomes less uniform because of poor 

grazing or traffic distribution, resource availability 

decreases in some patches and increases in others. 

Table 1.Pasture condition indicators. 

From "Guide to Pasture Condition Scoring" and the 

"National Range & Pasture Handbook," available at 

www.glti.nrcs.usda.gov. Additional soil quality indicators 

are described in Soil Quality Information Sheets, available 

at http://soils.usda.gov/sqi. 

Areas of concern 

Indicators 

Soil, site 

stability 

Site 

hydrology 

Plant 

community 

productivity 

Livestock 

(or wildlife) 

performance 

Percent desirable plants I I D D 

Plant cover D D D I 

Plant diversity I I D I-D 

Plant residue D D D D 

Plant vigor I I D D 

Percent legume I I D I-D 

Uniformity of use I I D D 

Livestock concentration areas D D D I-D 

Soil compaction D D I-D I 

Erosion D D I-D I 

Soil fertility I I D I-D 

Soil pH (reaction) I I D I 

Severity of use D D D D 

Site adaptation of desired 

 forage species D D D D 

Climatic stresses I I D D 

Disease and insect pressure I I D I-D 

Salinity and/or sodicity I I-D D I-D 

D–direct impact; I–indirect impact; I-D–direct and indirect impact. 
Assessment 

A pasture assessment estimates or measures the 

functional status or condition of pastureland. The 

assessment must start with a consideration of the land 

user’s desired plant community, production goals, and 

environmental goals. The appropriate Natural Resources 

Conservation Service (NRCS) forage suitability group 

report can help the land user to formulate a pasture plant 

community and production goal that will be the standard 

at the site. Information from this report should be 

supplemented, whenever possible, with updated 

information from local university extension forage 

references. 

The timing of assessments depends on seasonal cycles. 

Some soil properties are highly variable on a daily, 

seasonal, or yearly basis in response to changes in both 

temperature and moisture. For example, the total amount 

of organic matter in a soil is relatively insensitive to 

seasonal changes. In contrast, soil compaction, which is 

detected by penetration-resistance tools, varies with soil 

moisture and temperature, which depend on recent 

weather conditions. In this case, there should always be a 

reference site, such as one along a fence line, that is free 

of livestock traffic to use as a comparison with in-pasture 

compaction measurements. 

The optimum time and location for making assessments 

depend on the objectives. Potential objectives include: 

• selection of sites for monitoring (e.g., riparian zones, 

heavily used areas, and areas with noxious weeds), 

• gathering of inventory data used in making decisions 

(e.g., soil test samples and reports), 

• identification of areas at risk of degradation (e.g., 

streambanks, shorelines, and access lanes), and 

• targeting of management inputs (e.g., stocking 

procedures, fertilizer, water developments, and 

overseeding). 

Careful site selection helps to ensure that the 

assessment sites are truly representative of the pasture. A 

pasture that lies on a varied landscape is best evaluated by 

sampling each representative landscape position and soil 

or by sampling only those landscape positions where 

obvious problems are noted. The sampling sites should be 

on the same soil and in the same landscape position as the 

area of interest. Offsite features, such as crop fields, 

woodlots, hedgerows, farmsteads, roads, and other areas 

of recent or past disturbances, can have significant 

impacts and should be noted. The management history of 

the site can aid in interpretation. For instance, the pasture 

stand is sparse in a recently converted row-crop area. 

Monitoring 

Monitoring identifies changes in the resource through 

the orderly collection, analysis, and interpretation of 

quantitative data. It must be conducted over time at 

permanently marked locations and include baseline data if 

it is to ascertain the trend of the change in the functional 

status of the pasture. Monitoring is often designed so that 

different observers can make measurements consistently. 

Baseline data or standards may be used to establish 

management goals and aid in interpretation of the 

monitoring results. 

Site selection for monitoring depends primarily on the 

objectives, which include: 

• evaluation and documentation of the progress toward 

management goals, 

• detection of changes that may be an early warning of 

future problems or risks, and 

• determination of the trend in pastureland condition 

(maintaining, declining, or recovering). 

If the objective is to determine progress or trend, the 

sites that are representative of the pasture unit should be 

selected. If the objective is to provide an opportunity to 

modify management before problems occur, the sites that 

are most vulnerable should be selected. The detected 

changes must be real and must occur at a level of 

detection that allows land managers to recognize the 

problem and correct it before undesired and perhaps costly 

loss of soil quality occurs. Most degraded soil quality 

conditions can be reversed or even improved over the 

previous native site condition. For some conditions, such 

as content of organic matter, however, it may take several 

years or decades before the optimal level (at equilibrium) 

for the specific site can be restored. The monitoring plan 

should include the proper measurement frequency, which 

either limits or captures soil quality changes with time, as 

dictated by the specific objective, such as the need to 

adjust soil pH by applying lime. 

For more detail about assessment and monitoring, see 

“Guidelines for Soil Quality Assessment in Conservation 

Planning” available at http://soils.usda.gov/sqi.

(Prepared by the Soil Quality Institute, Grazing Lands Technology Institute, National Soil Survey Center, Natural Resources Conservation Service, USDA; 

Agricultural Research Service, USDA)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, 

political beliefs, sexual orientation, and marital or family status. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for 

communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA's TARGET Center at 202-720-2600 (voice and TDD). 

To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, Room 326-W, Whitten Building, 14th and Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 

20250-9410 or call 202-720-5964 (voice or TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.