ABSTRACT
Managing irrigation for soil health in arid and semi-arid regions Jeffrey Peter Mitchell and Howard Ferris, University of California-Davis, USA; Anil Shrestha, California State University-Fresno, USA; Francis Larney, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada; and Garrison Sposito, University of California-Berkeley, USA
1 Introduction
2 Arid and semi-arid regions
3 No-till cropping systems
4 Cover cropping systems
5 Soil food web management for nitrogen availability in arid and semi-arid areas
6 Conclusion
7 Future trends
8 Where to look for further information
9 References
Recent concerns about the continuing ability of soils to provide ecosystem services essential for food security (Amundson et al., 2015) has given considerable importance to the concept of soil health (Karlen, 2012; CDFA, 2016; FAO, 2017) advocated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and California Department of Food and Agriculture, among many other regional and local organizations. In the upcoming three decades, the global demand for food is expected to double because of increasing population and per capita income, while agricultural resources, such as water for irrigation and arable land, are projected to become even more constrained and scarce (Tilman et al., 2011; Foley et al., 2011; Sposito, 2013; Jägermeyr et al., 2016). Maintaining soil health in the face of this increasing demand for food and increasing pressure on agricultural resources is thus seen as one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century (Foley et al., 2011; Hall, 2014). Managing water to optimize soil health in the world’s irrigated regions is critical to meet these challenges.
