The North Central Region Soil Health Nexus is a university-led team dedicated to increasing access to research-based soil health knowledge, extension and resources.

The team was created in 2015 with funding from the North Central Region Water Network.  The team is structured around research, extension and outreach, and resources and communications with representatives from all 12 North Central Region states.

Check out our Soil Health Toolbox, including our resources for soil health on-farm research and our newly created Soil Health Nexus Matrix Decision-Tool!

Soil Health Digital Café Series

The Soil Health Nexus is hosting a series of informal soil health webinars featuring Extension soil health experts and researchers from across the region discussing the latest soil health research, resources, and news. The webinars will take place monthly; they will be an hour in length with 20-minute presentation, followed by 10-minutes of Q&A and then a casual 30-minute Digital Café where attendees can continue to discuss the topic in more depth with Soil Health Nexus members.

Upcoming Webinar:

The Top 10 Impacts of Cover Crops on Soil Health
Wednesday, April 19th at 2pm CT

Dr. Rob Myers, Director of the University of Missouri Center for Regenerative Agriculture and also Regional Director of Extension Programs for NCR-SARE, will discuss several of the key ways that cover crops can improve soil health.  These factors include nutrient cycling, soil organic matter, rainfall infiltration, addressing soil compaction, aggregate stability and impacts on earthworms, mycorrhizal fungi, and other aspects of soil biology.

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Most Recent Webinar:

Lessons learned from on-farm cover crop research in Nebraska
Wednesday, March 15th at 2pm CT – View the Recording

In this Digital Café, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Assistant Professor Andrea Basche and PhD graduate student Fernanda Krupek shared results from five-year on-farm experiments conducted through a partnership program with Nebraska NRCS and the Nebraska On-Farm Research Network. This includes findings on how cover crops impact soil properties, nutrient cycling, weed communities and best practices for sampling at the farm scale.

15Feb/23

Baseline Assessment of the Soil Health in Ohio

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A key part of soil health assessments is understanding how soil health indicators vary by soil type. This Digital Café features Christine Sprunger, Assistant Professor of Soil Health at Michigan State University, who outlines a baseline soil health assessment that was conducted in Ohio. The talk also outlines goals for conducting future baseline assessments across the state of Michigan. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

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18Jan/23

Prairies and Landscape Change: Notes from the Underground

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Restoring prairie from cropland has well-known benefits to soil health – at least to the soil directly underneath the prairie. In this presentation, Dr. Marshall McDaniel, Associate Professor at Iowa State University, shared how might prairie strips, or contour plantings of native prairie species embedded in row crop fields, affect the surrounding soil and crops. This presentation was originally broadcast on Wednesday, January 18, 2023.

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