Soils: An Introduction - Hardcover

Michael J. Singer

4.57

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0134491742 ISBN 13: 9780134491745

Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div, 1995

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Accessible to students with varying science backgrounds, this introduction to soil science offers solid coverage of all major topics. The authors use a unique "building the pedon" model to provide students with a single soil concept on which to build and learn. The text features diagrams and colour photographs with actual data, and provides optional chapter supplements for either review or enrichment, depending on individual needs. Soil parts are introduced systematically and in relation to one another, relating the complex soil body to its larger environment.

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From the Back Cover:

Key Benefit: Accessible to readers with varying science backgrounds, this introduction to soil science offers solid coverage of all major topics. Key Topics: The authors use a unique “building the pedon” model to provide students with a single soil concept on which to build and learn. The book features diagrams and color photos with actual data, and provides optional chapter supplements for either review or enrichment, depending on individual needs. Soil parts are introduced systematically and in relation to one another, relating the complex soil body to its larger environment. The book expands focus on soils as ecosystems, as parts of ecosystems, and as parts of environmental management and emphasizes and makes careful use of scale — ranging from the scale of organisms as small as viruses to the expanse of landscapes.

Soils: An Introduction has been revised to include concepts and information new since the fourth edition in 1999. This edition, like the first four, is written to be understood by all students, but it has sufficient depth to serve as a text for soil science majors and as a reference for anyone interested in soil. We have expanded the environmental emphasis in most chapters to highlight the role of soils in nonagricultural uses.

Why be interested in soil? Soil is one of the "ultimate" resources, like water and air. There are no replacements for soil for growing plants for food and fiber (cotton, pine, and redwood trees), for raising cattle and sheep, for anchoring the foundations of our homes, for building golf courses, and for burying our garbage. Soils, a close friend once said, are "the excited skin of the earth" in which geology, biology, chemistry, and physics combine. With knowledge we can manage this slowly renewable resource so that it can serve us and provide us with our requirements for life, while we in turn should leave it intact for future generations.

Soil science is changing, and we wanted a text that would make the current concepts easy to understand. We therefore have excluded unnecessary jargon and have defined necessary terms both in the text and in a glossary. We have left out or deemphasized obsolete concepts that seem no longer worth the trouble they cause and have used chapter supplements to deliver valuable detail without cluttering the main text. We have tried to keep our language direct, to stress principles, and to avoid trivia. We have also included many original diagrams and pictures that we hope will inform and interest when the words falter.

Repetition aids learning. There is wisdom in the old advice to tell what you are going to tell, then tell it, then tell what you told. We begin each chapter with an outline and an overview. Further summaries of the main points appear in chapter summaries, in summary diagrams and tables, or at the ends of sections within the chapter. Finally, each chapter has questions to encourage thought on the main points.

We begin by naming parts—mineral particles, organic matter, organisms, pores, water—and explain how they relate to one another to form soil and with plants and microbes to form an ecosystem. We then relate this complex soil body to its larger environment by discussing soil origins, classification, and interpretation. This is a logical order of treatment, but, like any other order, it will not suit all readers, and so they should be able to change the order or read only some of the chapters. Accordingly, we have repeated important ideas to help make each chapter less dependent on the others.

We have continued to use our "building the pedon" concept introduced in the first edition. We introduce the pedon concept in Chapter 1 as an empty rectangle and develop it in each subsequent chapter. As inorganic and organic matter, water, and pores are added, the empty rectangle takes on the characteristics of a "real" soil. Our goal is to have every student understand the parts that contribute to the whole soil individual and then appreciate how the parts function together.

Our guiding philosophy is that soils are interesting and important parts of natural systems, and we hope that the users of this book develop an understanding and appreciation of soils from these pages.

Special thanks are given to Mary Savina and Jim White for their valuable suggestions on the new edition.

Michael J. Singer
Donald N. Munns

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