Moving beyond reductive qualitative tillage labels: quantifying tillage intensity to assess soil disturbance and its impact on soil quality (original) (raw)

Wendling, Marina; Büchi, Lucie and Charles, Raphael (2026) Moving beyond reductive qualitative tillage labels: quantifying tillage intensity to assess soil disturbance and its impact on soil quality.Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, xx, xx-xx. [Submitted]

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Document available online at: https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6045192

Summary

Tillage is a generic term describing an array of practices used to prepare the soil prior to sowing crops, with a highly variable impact on soil quality. Tillage is commonly described using qualitative labels such as ‘conventional’, ‘reduced’, or ‘no-till’, but these denominations do not allow for quantification of the intensity of the tillage operations, and mask large differences in soil disturbance. This current study demonstrates the use of the Soil Tillage Intensity Rating (STIR), developed by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, to quantify tillage intensity across research and extension contexts. Using three case studies and literature review, we show that STIR provides a consistent quantitative indicator of soil disturbance. 1. In a 45-year long-term tillage experiment, STIR effectively discriminated among treatments and captured historical changes in machinery and practice better than categorical labels. 2. On 60 Swiss wheat fields, STIR values ranged from 18 to 200 and showed large variability within and between conventional, organic and no-till cropping systems. 3. In participatory workshops with 25 farmers, STIR enabled quantitative comparison of tillage strategies and supported discussions on how to create soil-friendly rotations. Despite limitations in data requirements and local adaptation, STIR proved a versatile indicator linking tillage intensity with soil management outcomes. Its broader adoption could improve quantitative comparability among studies, enhance participatory research, and promote more transparent assessment of soil disturbance intensity and of the impact of tillage on the environment.

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