the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 10 Feb 2026
SoilHealthDB-V2: An updated and standardized global database of soil health under conservation management
Abstract. Field-based measurements of soil health under various conservation management practices have been compiled into the global Soil Health Database (SoilHealthDB), supporting comprehensive analyses of the effects of systems such as cover cropping, no-tillage, agroforestry systems, and organic fertilization on soil health. To support more effective soil health assessments and related analyses, it is essential to maintain updated and standardized datasets. In response to this need, the existing database of SoilHealthDB has been updated and standardized as SoilHealthDB-V2. All soil health indicators were harmonized to improve consistency, traceability, and analytical accuracy. The number of observations increased from 5,907 to 8,874, expanding global spatiotemporal coverage and improving representation across diverse climate regions. Several new variables related to cover crop management have been introduced, including cover crop termination date, cash crop planting date, cover crop termination method and residue return method, cover crop irrigation and fertilization practices. These additions enable more detailed assessments of best management practices. Furthermore, the inclusion of experiment duration-related data allows for more robust investigations of temporal trends in soil health outcomes. New indicators related soil carbon pools further enhance the database’s utility for evaluating the effects of conservation practices on carbon cycling. Overall, SoilHealthDB-V2 offers a robust, globally relevant foundation for soil health assessment and provides critical support for developing evidence-based conservation management strategies.
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Status: open (until 07 Jun 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-677', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Apr 2026 reply
Data sets
SoilHealthDB-V2 Jinshi Jian https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17565204
Model code and software
SoilHealthDB-V2 Jinshi Jian https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17565204
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- 1
The authors report the update of the global soil health database (SoilHealthDB), which has been used in soil organic carbon, crop yield, erosion, and runoff studies and has played an important role in the field. This paper clearly documents the background of the original database, its past utility and significance, the rationale for a major update, and the potential future applications of the newest version. I offer the following comments in hope that they will help further improve the manuscript.
Line 179: The methods section only presents the formula for calculating RRx, but the figures display results as % change. Please add the conversion formula % change = (RRx − 1) × 100 to the methods for completeness.
Line 265: Figures 3–5 describe data as from "SoilHealthDB-V2," Figure 6 as "under conservation managements," and Figure 7 as "cover crop." Please clarify whether these reflect different data subsets or the full database, and ensure consistent descriptions across all figure titles and captions.
Line 280: The caption states that the orange bars represent "SoilHealthDB-V2," but they should represent only the new additions in V2 relative to the original SoilHealthDB. Please revise the figure or caption accordingly.
Line 335: It is difficult to distinguish statistically significant from non-significant results in Figure 7. Consider adding significance indicators (e.g., asterisks) to each row or panel.
Line 382: The paragraph discusses the effects of cover crop management practices on soil indicators. Since the authors only added a few cover-crop-related indicators and did not conduct a specific analysis using the database in this paper, it may be better to remove this paragraph and retain these discussions for a separate paper focused on cover crop management practices.