Washington Soil Health Initiative Roadmap
Objective and Roadmap Process
Objective of the Roadmap
The objective of this roadmap is to outline the current situation of soil health in Washington State, identify goals and milestones looking forward, and then set a detailed plan to maintain and improve soil health. This effort sought input from a diverse group of stakeholders across the state and acquired information through a variety of mechanisms, described below. This roadmap is meant to educate an audience with varying levels of understanding of soil health.
Roadmap Process
Washington State has a diversity of production systems and for the purpose of simplicity, this roadmap was broken into seven production regions (Figure 2). These regions represent the major production systems in the state and are often coupled with unique geographies and climates. In addition to these seven focus areas, an eighth group “the environmental constituency” was added to represent the interest of environmental groups. A local expert was identified for each of the eight major focus areas to act as the lead information acquirer. For some focus areas, previous efforts documenting soil health issues and goals and were utilized where applicable. If existing resources were not present, the local lead designed an effort to acquire this information through a variety of means (e.g., focus groups, web-based interviews/conversations, direct conversations with stakeholders, web-based survey). This information was then distilled by the local lead and the roadmap editors. Once the roadmap was compiled, feedback from both internal and external reviewers was sought.
