Grazing land ecosystem services including food provision and climate regulation are greatly influenced by soil health. This paper provides a condensed review of studies on the response of three important soil properties related to soil health to grazing land management: water infiltration, carbon (C) sequestration, and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Impacts of management strategies that are often used in grazing lands are discussed in this review including vegetation composition, grazing methods, and other factors such as fertilizer use and climatic conditions. In general, proper grazing management such as continuous moderate grazing and rotational/deferred-rotational grazing with low or moderate stocking rates tends to benefit all three soil properties. Water infiltration can usually be increased with full vegetation cover, increased soil C, and aggregate stability, or be decreased with greater soil bulk density. Adoption of highly productive plant species with faster turnover rates can promote soil C sequestration by increasing C input. However, excessive C removal from ecosystems due to overgrazing or improper soil fertilization management results in higher C loss, which can have detrimental effects on soil C sequestration. Proper stocking rate and a balanced manure/fertilizer management was found to be critical for enhancing NUE. Grazing land management sometimes simultaneously influence the three soil properties. Techniques that can increase soil C such as introduction of high productive plant species can often promote water infiltration and soil nitrogen (N). Some other practices such as adoption of N fertilizer may enhance C sequestration while being detrimental to NUE. An integrated management plan for a specific location or farm should be considered carefully to improve soil health as well as ecosystem production. This review provides farmers and policy makers the current state of general knowledge on how health-related soil processes are affected by grazing land management.

Agricultural landscapes sit at the center of two coupled crises: accelerating degradation of soil functions and persistent impairment of surface and groundwater quality

Extensive research has examined tillage effects on soil water conservation, but it often relied on point‐in‐time sampling, decoupled soil moisture content (SMC), and soil matric potential (SMP), and lacked continuous assessment of moisture dynamics. Thus, this study was conducted to continuously monitor SMC and SMP under no‐till (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) using moisture and tension sensors. The experiment was conducted in South Dakota cropping systems during three growing seasons (2021–2023) to study soils at 15‐ and 30‐cm depths. Further, Hydrus (2D/3D) was used to optimize soil hydraulic properties through inverse modeling and simulate moisture dynamics. Results indicated generally higher SMC (15%–38%) and SMP under NT than CT. Hydrus (2D/3D) simulation was effective ( R ² = 0.61–0.94 for SMC; 0.81–0.99 for SMP; root mean squared error = 0.01–0.03 cm ³ cm ⁻³ for SMC; −35 to −98 cm for SMP). Unlike prior studies, our inverse modeling approach integrated site‐specific initial parameter values and constraints (±2 standard errors) to mitigate the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm's sensitivity to initial guesses, with validation against an independent replicate, a methodological improvement over conventional unvalidated methods. Key results showed that NT minimized unproductive evaporation (25%–31% of rainfall vs. CT's 28%–35%) and maximized transpiration (58%–68% vs. CT's 47%–61%), with a 20‐percentage‐point transpiration advantage in 2022 (the driest growing season), further underscoring NT's drought resilience. By quantifying tillage‐driven water partitioning, this study contributes to advancing prior work and establishes NT as a water‐efficient practice for rainfed systems while advancing Hydrus as a validated tool for tillage impact assessments.