Understanding Soil Change : Soil Sustainability over Millennia, Centuries, and Decades

Rating:
Summary: A great book for a broad audience
Review: To most biologists soils are the ultimate "black box." We know that civilization could not develop without soils, and that soils are not only the foundations of all terrestrial ecosystems, but also the environment for >99% of ecosystem biodiversity. Soil scientists have gained tremendous views inside of this black box, and Richter and Markewitz provide a grand tour for scientists and students of other disciplines. This wonderful book explores how fertile, biologically rich soils develop over long periods of time (including the major chemical change of acidification), and how these ecological systems change dramatically as humans alter the balances between inputs, outputs, and cycles. About half of the story focuses on the development of deep, ancient soils (accounting for 40% of the soils in the humid subtropics and tropics), and the other half on the broader context of time, soil development, and land use by people. The authors develop these themes by exploring a deep, highly weathered soil at the Calhoun Forest in South Carolina. Changes in the soil are traced from the Devonian to the Holocene, through the heyday of cotton agriculture in the early 1800s to the Civil War, to abandonment and planting with pine trees in the mid 1900s. The changes in the soils, both long-term and short-term, derive from weathering of the soil by acids produced by plants and microbes (carbonic acid from respiration, and low molecular weight organic acids), and by the accumulation of organic matter (a byproduct of decomposition of plant tissues). Native forest ecosystems are remarkably productive on the Calhoun soil, despite the soil's advanced weathering stage. However, this productivity declines rapidly in managed forest plantations (or agriculture) unless fertilizers are used to augment the slow cycling of nutrients in the ancient soil. Soils are not only one of the most important parts of the Earth, but also dynamic, rapidly changing, living systems. The authors conclude with an important plea for international networks to monitor rates of change in soils. This book is a great window for biologists into the most important black box on Earth.

Rating:
Summary: A great book for a broad audience
Review: To most biologists soils are the ultimate "black box." We know that civilization could not develop without soils, and that soils are not only the foundations of all terrestrial ecosystems, but also the environment for >99% of ecosystem biodiversity. Soil scientists have gained tremendous views inside of this black box, and Richter and Markewitz provide a grand tour for scientists and students of other disciplines. This wonderful book explores how fertile, biologically rich soils develop over long periods of time (including the major chemical change of acidification), and how these ecological systems change dramatically as humans alter the balances between inputs, outputs, and cycles. About half of the story focuses on the development of deep, ancient soils (accounting for 40% of the soils in the humid subtropics and tropics), and the other half on the broader context of time, soil development, and land use by people. The authors develop these themes by exploring a deep, highly weathered soil at the Calhoun Forest in South Carolina. Changes in the soil are traced from the Devonian to the Holocene, through the heyday of cotton agriculture in the early 1800s to the Civil War, to abandonment and planting with pine trees in the mid 1900s. The changes in the soils, both long-term and short-term, derive from weathering of the soil by acids produced by plants and microbes (carbonic acid from respiration, and low molecular weight organic acids), and by the accumulation of organic matter (a byproduct of decomposition of plant tissues). Native forest ecosystems are remarkably productive on the Calhoun soil, despite the soil's advanced weathering stage. However, this productivity declines rapidly in managed forest plantations (or agriculture) unless fertilizers are used to augment the slow cycling of nutrients in the ancient soil. Soils are not only one of the most important parts of the Earth, but also dynamic, rapidly changing, living systems. The authors conclude with an important plea for international networks to monitor rates of change in soils. This book is a great window for biologists into the most important black box on Earth.