About

Anna Cates is Minnesota’s first State Soil Health Specialist in the MN Office for Soil Health (MOSH). Her work is dedicated to improving soil health in Minnesota by collaborating with farmers and conservation professionals. Her research focuses on soil organic matter cycling and storage across various cropping systems. She holds a PhD in Agronomy and an MS in Soil Science and Agroecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her areas of interest include soil health, soil carbon, soil organic matter pools, soil aggregation, and cropping systems.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Genetics
• Computational biology
• Chemistry
• Evolutionary biology
• Ecology
• Astronomy
• Library science
• Organic chemistry
• Data science
• Agronomy
• Environmental science
• Environmental chemistry
• Mineralogy
• World Wide Web
• Soil science
• Geology

Selected publications

• Effect of soil health management on soil water storage for climate resilience

  Agrosystems Geosciences & Environment · 2026-02-19

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Soil health (SH) management has been promoted to improve climate resilience across agricultural systems. An on‐farm field study was conducted to (1) evaluate the soil water storage (SWS) in SH and conventional (CV) management systems across four paired sites in Minnesota and Wisconsin and (2) to assess the response of these management systems to drought and significant rainfall (>25 mm in 24 h), using SWS as a primary metric. Two solar‐powered soil probes with multiple capacitance sensors were installed from July to October in 2021 and May to October in 2022 and 2023 to monitor soil moisture every 30 min at 10‐, 20‐, 40‐, 60‐, 80‐, and 100‐cm depths. Daily average SWS at the root zone (0‐ to 40‐cm depth) was significantly higher ( p < 0.0001) under SH management compared to CV management. Out of the four sites, three showed at least 7% greater SWS in SH management compared to CV management. During extreme drought periods, the SH management sites consistently had at least 13% higher SWS, showing potential for improved soil moisture retention and resilience to drought. Our analysis showed the SH system captured 35% more water than the CV system overall, but inconsistencies across the sites highlight the need for a larger dataset and more in‐depth analysis to better understand these patterns. Overall, the study indicates that SH systems with varying use of no‐till, cover cropping, and organic amendments can improve the soil's ability to store more water during the growing season, enhancing the resilience of US Midwest agricultural fields.

  PublisherDOI

• Managing soil sustainably on small-scale vegetable farms: Lessons learned from high tunnel and open field vegetable production

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-01-28 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Small-scale vegetable farms are increasingly important to local food systems, but the soils on these farms are not well understood, particularly in high tunnel production environments. Therefore, this study aimed to 1. Compare soil nutrients and soil health metrics in high tunnels and nearby open fields. 2. Document soil nutrient accumulation on diversified vegetable farms and assess loss potential. 3. Explore the impacts of specific management practices (input use, cover crops, tillage, and soil testing) and farm demographics on a variety of soil health and soil nutrient metrics. Just under half of the high tunnels in this study had soluble salt accumulation, which was associated with higher soil nitrate concentrations. The pH of many high tunnel soils was above the optimal range for crop production, which was correlated with irrigation water alkalinity. Some high tunnel soils had rapid water infiltration rates, with implications for irrigation water management. Both high tunnel and open field soil were rich in nutrients compared with other Minnesota farms. Preliminary assessments suggested risks to surface and groundwater from nutrient runoff and leaching. While farmer experience and more years in vegetable production were negatively associated with soil health metrics, management practices including reduced tillage, organic management, and application of plant-based compost were positively associated with soil health. Cation exchange capacity and permanganate oxidizable carbon did not provide significantly more insight than simply measuring organic matter. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal spore counts were inconclusive, but aggregate stability and bulk density were responsive to farmer reported soil management activities. Core ideas High tunnel soil tends to be rich in nutrients and organic matter. They also accumulate soluble salts, likely from excess inputs Irrigation water routinely tested high in pH and alkalinity. These factors may explain high soil pH in high tunnels. Small-scale vegetable farms often have high concentrations of soil nutrients in both high tunnels and open fields, with potential to cause environmental contamination through leaching and runoff Vegetable production may be inherently hard on soil health, but conservation practices including reduced tillage, organic management, and use of plant-based composts can improve soil health in these production systems

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Field-saturated and near-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity as influenced by conventional and soil health management systems

  Soil and Tillage Research · 2025-01-26 · 6 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Soil health management system impacts on dynamic soil hydraulic functions before and after rainfall

  Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment · 2025-07-23 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Soil health management systems use agricultural practices incorporating living roots, persistent surface cover, diverse crop rotations, and minimal soil disturbance such as tillage. These systems are widely thought to improve soil hydraulic functions. However, intense rainfall can cause physical slaking of aggregates, loss of surface pores, and reduced hydraulic functions. Soil health management systems correlate with stable aggregates and large soil pores, but it is not clear how these properties change with rainfall in fine-textured soil profiles. Therefore, quantifying hydraulic function in soil health systems is important as climate change intensifies growing season rainfall. We investigated the effects of soil health systems on volumetric soil water content (VWC), soil aggregates, soil pore size distributions, and a suite of soil health indicators in response to rainfall. During 2021 and 2022, we collected data from five tillage and cover crop treatments in replicated plots at the Southern Research and Outreach Center (SROC) in Waseca, MN (tillage treatments included rip/chisel plow, strip till, no till, and cover crop treatments included no cover crops and cereal rye), and three paired systems (conventional and soil health management, which differ in tillage and cover crop use) at long-term (≥ 5 years), on-farm sites with fine-textured soils. We monitored volumetric soil water content and soil aggregates within 24 h before and after select rainfall events. Across all locations, few differences in water capture, evidenced by an increase in VWC after rain, were evident. Aggregate responses to rainfall were observed between the paired on-farm treatments. Generally, conventional sites had 5–20 % more < 0.053 mm and 0.053–0.25 mm aggregates following rainfall than soil health sites, but this effect was inconsistent across locations. Soil health systems on-farm generally retained 10–30 % more > 2 mm water-stable aggregates than conventional systems in response to rainfall. Based on soil water retention curves, on-farm soil health sites had 2.5–12.5 % more macroporosity (pore diameter > 75 µm) than conventional systems, despite having similar water capture. At the on-farm sites, greater microporosity and pore connectivity are attributed to an observed 0.25–2 cm/hr greater unsaturated hydraulic conductivity relative to soil health sites, validating the greater macroporosity observed in the soil health sites. Despite long-term treatment history at SROC plots, there were no differences in unsaturated hydraulic conductivity. At one on-farm site, the soil health system had higher soil health indicators than the conventional system, where the soil health system included 30 years of no-till and 12 years of cover crops compared to moldboard plowing in the conventional system. This research indicates the importance of holistically incorporating soil health practices into field systems for achieving enhanced soil functions. Figure (above): Sampling timeline. Data was collected from plots 24 h before, 24–48 h after, and 3–5 days after a rain event. • On-farm soil health systems had more aggregates after rain than conventional systems. • Soil health systems had positive effects on pore networks and hydraulic properties. • Combining soil health practices increased C pools relative to only select practices. • Small plots with single practices did not reflect field scale with multiple practices.

  PublisherDOI

• The ecological relevance of fast-cycling mineral-associated organic matter – a dynamic pool of 'persistent’ soil carbon and nitrogen

  2025-05-08 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Longstanding theories and models classify mineral-associated organic matter (MAOM) as the large (~60%) but slow-cycling and persistent portion of the soil organic matter (SOM) pool. Strong physico-chemical interactions and diffusion limitations restrict the turnover of MAOM, allowing carbon and nitrogen bound therein to persist in soil for as long as centuries to millennia. However, MAOM is a chemically and functionally diverse pool with a substantial portion cycling at relatively fast (i.e., minutes to years) timescales. Despite a growing body of evidence for the heterogenous and multi-pool nature of MAOM, we lack consensus on how to conceptualize and directly quantify fast-cycling MAOM and its ecological significance. We demonstrate the dynamic qualities of fast-cycling MAOM vary based on 1) the chemistry of the mineral particles and organic matter, 2) the complex set of interactions between OM and the mineral matrix, and 3) the presence and strength of destabilizing forces that lead to decomposition or loss of MAOM (i.e., plant-microbe interactions, land use change, agricultural intensification, and climate change). Finally, we discuss potential implications and research opportunities for how we measure, manage, and model the dynamic subfraction of this otherwise persistent pool of SOM.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Integrated soil health management influences soil properties: Insights from a US Midwest study

  Geoderma · 2025-02-17 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  • Wet aggregate stability was higher in soil health fields than conventional fields. • Soil properties were most responsive to the integration of soil health practices. • Less tillage with more cover crops was the most effective practices’ combination. • Site specific response varied based on soil texture and management practices. This study evaluated the effects of integrated soil health management in the US Upper Midwest over three years (2021–2023), under diverse cropping systems and soil textures. We assessed 15 field pairs, each consisting of one conventional (CV) and one soil health (SH) site, implementing contrasting management. Our analysis focused on four soil organic matter pools, six microbial indicators derived from phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) and one physical indicator. Log response ratios (LRR) were calculated to compare pair-wise responses between medium and moderately fine-textured soils. Wet aggregate stability (WAS) showed consistent improvement; within each pair, more soil health based principles (reduced tillage, more cover crops and crop diversity) led to greater aggregate stability compared to the paired CV site. Medium-textured soils responded more strongly to soil health management than moderately fine-textured soils. To assess the effects of specific management practices, we built a mixed-effects model with practices and their interactions as fixed effects and soil health indicators as response variables. Results showed that most soil properties were significantly responsive to two management combinations, 1) tillage x cover crops, and 2) tillage x cover crops x crop diversity. Microbial indicators along with potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN) exhibited the strongest increases with integrated soil health management ( p < 0.05), followed by permanganate oxidizable carbon (POXC) and total N ( p < 0.1). Cover cropping alone moderately increased PMN ( p < 0.1). While site-specific behavior varied based on texture and management intensities, our overall results supported the adoption of integrated soil health practices for healthier agricultural soils.

  PublisherDOI

• Evidence for the existence and ecological relevance of fast-cycling mineral-associated organic matter

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2025-08-22 · 27 citations

  articleOpen access

  Longstanding theories and models classify mineral-associated organic matter as the large ( ~ 60%) but slow-cycling and persistent portion of soil organic matter. Strong physico-chemical interactions and diffusion limitations restrict the turnover of mineral-associated organic matter, allowing carbon and nitrogen bound therein to persist in soil for as long as centuries to millennia. However, mineral-associated organic matter is a chemically and functionally diverse pool with a substantial portion cycling at relatively fast (i.e., minutes to years) timescales. Despite a growing body of evidence for the heterogenous and multi-pool nature of mineral-associated organic matter, we lack consensus on how to conceptualize and directly quantify fast-cycling mineral-associated organic matter and its ecological significance. We demonstrate that the dynamic qualities of fast-cycling mineral-associated organic matter vary based on 1) the chemistry of the mineral particles and organic matter, 2) the complex set of interactions between organic matter and the mineral matrix, and 3) the presence and strength of destabilizing forces that lead to decomposition or loss of mineral-associated organic matter (i.e., plant-microbe interactions, agricultural intensification, and climate change). Finally, we discuss potential implications and research opportunities for how we measure, manage, and model the dynamic subfraction of this otherwise persistent pool of soil organic matter. The dynamic qualities of fact-cycling mineral-associated organic matter depend on chemistry between minerals and organic matter, their interactions, and the destabilizing forces causing decomposition, according to a review of recent studies on mineral-associated organic matter across ecosystems

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A global database of soil microbial phospholipid fatty acids and enzyme activities

  Scientific Data · 2025-09-26 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access

  Soil microbes drive ecosystem function and play a critical role in how ecosystems respond to global change. Research surrounding soil microbial communities has rapidly increased in recent decades, and substantial data relating to phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) and potential enzyme activity have been collected and analysed. However, studies have mostly been restricted to local and regional scales, and their accuracy and usefulness are limited by the extent of accessible data. Here we aim to improve data availability by collating a global database of soil PLFA and potential enzyme activity measurements from 12,258 georeferenced samples located across all continents, 5.1% of which have not previously been published. The database contains data relating to 113 PLFAs and 26 enzyme activities, and includes metadata such as sampling date, sample depth, and soil pH, total carbon, and total nitrogen. This database will help researchers in conducting both global- and local-scale studies to better understand soil microbial biomass and function.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Soil Health Management System Impacts on Dynamic Soil Hydraulic Functions Before and after Rainfall

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Paired resampling to detect field-level soil organic carbon stock change. Comment on “Testing the feasibility of quantifying change in agricultural soil carbon stocks through empirical sampling” by Bradford et al.

  Geoderma · 2024-07-08 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Randall D. Jackson

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  24 shared

• Thomas Möck

  University of East Anglia

  6 shared

• Thea Whitman

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  6 shared

• Т. I. Zemskaya

  Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

  6 shared

• Lena Gerwick

  Scripps Institution of Oceanography

  6 shared

• Sarahi L. Garcia

  Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

  6 shared

• Osvaldo Ulloa

  6 shared

• Petr Baldrián

  Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Microbiology

  6 shared

Education

• PhD, Agronomy

  University of Wisconsin-Madison