MASQ: Monitoring and Assessing Soil Quality
In 1996, The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in its nineteenth report "Sustainable Use of Soil", stressed the need for the assessment and monitoring of soil quality. Such information would be useful for Government Departments and Agencies e.g. the DEFRA, SEERAD (Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Division), the Environment Agency and SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency), in various aspects of policy-making including:

• acidification of soils and its effects
• soil as source and sink for greenhouse gases
• effects of climate change on soil processes
• sustainable management of arable soils
• waste management and pollution control

Soils sustain much of the earth’s biological activity, diversity and productivity by storing and cycling nutrients and other elements, regulating water and solute flow as well as filtering and buffering inorganic and organic materials, including industrial and municipal pollutants and waste materials.

The capacity of a soil to carry out these functions can be defined as soil quality and integrates the innate soil chemical physical and biological attributes within a framework of space, time and land use. The Countryside Survey 2000 provides a cost-effective framework to link a soil biological survey with other soil and land use data to develop the integrated approaches necessary for soil quality assessment and monitoring in Great Britain.