Soil Management: Building a Stable Base for Agriculture

Degradation of soils continues at a pace that will eventually create a local, regional, or even global crisis when diminished soil resources collide with increasing climate variation. It's not too late to restore our soils to a more productive state by rediscovering the value of soil management, building on our well-established and ever-expanding scientific understanding of soils. Soil management concepts have been in place since the cultivation of crops, but we need to rediscover the principles that are linked together in effective soil management. This book is unique because of its treatment of soil management based on principles―the physical, chemical, and biological processes and how together they form the foundation for soil management processes that range from tillage to nutrient management. Whether new to soil science or needing a concise reference, readers will benefit from this book's ability to integrate the science of soils with management issues and long-term conservation efforts.

Dr. Jerry L. Hatfield received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 1975 in the area of Agricultural Climatology and Statistics a M.S. in Agronomy from the University of Kentucky in 1972, and B.S. from Kansas State University in Agronomy in 1971. He served on the faculty of the University of California-Davis as a biometeorologist from 1975 through 1983 and then joined USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Lubbock, Texas, as the Research Leader of the Plant Stress and Water Conservation Research Unit from 1983 through 1989. He was appointed Laboratory Director of the National Soil Tilth Laboratory in 1989 (renamed the Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in October 2009).
He served as the USDA-ARS representative to the Heinz Center project on the State of the Nation's Ecosystems, the Key Indicators Initiative, National Audubon Society project on Waterbirds on Working Lands, and Agricultural Air Quality Task Force for USDA, and is the lead author on the Agriculture section of the Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3 on "The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity". He was part of the IPCC process that received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and currently serves on the IPCC special committee to evaluate the impact of extreme events on ecosystems. He served as a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, and Past-President of the American Society of Agronomy (2007). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Soil and Water Conservation Society and a member of American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society. He has numerous awards from different organizations.

Thomas J. Sauer has a Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is currently a Research Soil Scientist at the USDA-ARS National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa. His current research interests include land use conversion effects on carbon and nutrient cycling, soil quality, and the implications for climate change adaptation and mitigation.