Development of a soil degradation assessment tool for organic olive groves in southern Spain

Forty-six organic olive orchards under different soil management systems were evaluated in the province of Córdoba (southern Spain) to assess the state of their soil properties and the degree of degradation of their topsoil, and the possibilities for monitoring any soil degradation risk. Our study indicated that 55% of the olive farms sampled (OF) presented a low soil degradation, in which most of their deficiencies were a low content in some soil nutrients such as P, which may be partly due to the moderate fertility of some soils in the area. This result could be explained by the low or moderate intensity of the farming systems used in a large part of the study area. Seven percent of the sampled OFs had a large number of physical, chemical and biological soil properties, that could be considered as being degraded, and these olive orchards were classified as seriously degraded. The remaining OFs were in an intermediate state. The degree of soil degradation was not correlated with any specific soil management method or with predicted soil erosion rates, suggesting that it was the result of specific and varied on-farm conditions difficult to detect without a field evaluation. Three soil degradation indexes were obtained through a principal component analysis of the soil properties analyzed. These indexes were able to distinguish between OFs with low soil degradation and those in a serious state of degradation. Two of the indexes are basically integrative ones that can be used in relatively large surveys considering a large number of soil properties. The third index developed used only three soil properties, organic C, water stable macroaggregates, and extractable P, and has the potential to be used as a relatively easy and inexpensive screening test of soil degradation for organic olive farms in the area.