Abstract: Being important for evaluation of soil degradation, monitoring and assessment of soil quality is a sound basis for updating the designs of sustained soil management system. But now there is a lack of uniform indexes for evaluating soil quality changes, and the methods to integrate the main soil properties with soil management practice are also meager for the same purpose. In this paper, principles of selecting indexes for red soil quality evaluation are put forward firstly. And then an index system applicable to evaluating dynamic changes in red soil quality is approached from chemical, physical and biological aspects. Indexes used to conduct research on evaluation of red soil quality in hilly region of South China are reviewed. Besides, the methods from land assessment are chosen for evaluation of red soil quality, and some new methods for soil quality assessment in the world are outlined, too.

Key words: evaluation, red soil degradation, soil quality