Soil Health Assessment Methods: Field-Based Kits, Laboratory Analyses, Soil Quality Indices, and Remote Sensing Approaches

AbstractSoil health assessment has become a central component of sustainable land management, climate-smart agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. Traditional soil fertility testing, while essential, captures only a limited subset of soil functions and fails to account for physical structure, biological activity, and ecosystem resilience. In response, soil health assessment has evolved into an integrated framework combining field-based measurements, laboratory chemical and biological analyses, soil quality indices, and increasingly, remote sensing technologies. This narrative review synthesizes major soil health assessment methods, including rapid field-testing kits, laboratory-based chemical and biological indicators, integrated soil quality indices, and remote and proximal sensing approaches. Drawing on peer-reviewed literature indexed in Google Scholar, the review evaluates the strengths and limitations of each method, discusses their applicability across land-use systems, and highlights emerging trends in spatially explicit soil monitoring. The review emphasizes the importance of combining complementary methods within tiered assessment strategies to support decision-making, monitoring, and policy development.Keywords: soil health, soil quality assessment, field soil testing, soil quality index, CASH, SMAF, remote sensing, digital soil mapping