Biological Activity

What it is: Biological activity indicators include yield, yield stability, yield relative to inputs, enzyme activity, microbial biomass, and fungal biomass.

Why it is important: Biological activity is an important indicator because...

Specific problems that might be caused by (too little, too much etc.) are:

What you can do:

You can improve your soil's biological activity levels by...

For more information go to Soil Management Practices.

Ways that you can measure biological activity include:

Method	How Performed	Comments
Yield stability
Yield:Inputs
Microbial biomass
Active fungi
Potentially mineralizable N (PMN)
Worms
qCO2
Respiration
Decomposition rates
Enzyme activity	Lab incubation and measurement of product formation under strict environmental and chemical conditions.	Advantages of this method are that for some soil enzyme assays there is much less seasonal variability than other microbial properties and therefore show long-term trajectories of land management. Also, many can be run on air-dried soil that is not possible for most any other biological property.

The different methods have different levels of accuracy and precision.