Describing the impact of farming on soil quality is challenging because the model should consider changes in the physical, chemical and biological status of the soil. Physical damage of the soil through heavy traffic has already been analysed in several LCA studies. However, compaction through grazing animals has widely been ignored, and physically based model approaches are very rare. With this paper, we introduce a new approach, which is closely related to stress propagation methods generally applied for analyzing compaction caused by heavy machinery. The new method was checked for plausibility by using a comprehensive multi-year dataset that contained detailed information on pasture management of several hundred Swiss dairy farms. First results show that the new method provides plausible results for the two physical soil indicators macropore volume and aggregate stability.
