This richly illustrated book celebrates the diversity, importance, and intrinsic beauty of soils around the world and helps the reader to understand the ways that soils are related to the landscapes in which they form. The book unravels the complex bond between humans and soils and the importance of soils in our cultures and everyday lives.
Soil is critical to terrestrial life on earth. It underpins human food supply and provides materials on which we build our lives. Soil is out of sight and often out of mind, thus easy to overlook. Yet soil has tremendous variety and intrinsic beauty for those who care to look. Soil contains a memory of the events that have shaped the landscape and the environment. With help you can look at a soil and understand the stories that it has to tell.
Written in a reader-friendly way, Celebrating Soil is a wonderful resource for farmers, horticulturalists, naturalists, students and others who are concerned about how soils are formed, work and are used.
Dr. Megan Balks has over 30 years of experience in soil-related study, research, and teaching. Megan
is based in New Zealand (at the University of Waikato), and her experience includes 19 trips to study
soils in Antarctica as well as work throughout New Zealand. Megan has also traveled widely to study
soils having undertaken fi eldtrips in many parts of the world, including the Arctic (Russia, Norway,
and Alaska), Australia, Thailand, Peru, China, Samoa, and Europe. Megan undertook her PhD studying
irrigation of effl uent onto land, and she has also worked on water irrigation schemes in Otago and
effl uent irrigation in Australia. She has supervised over 40 graduate thesis projects on the widest
range of soil-related studies from soil fertility in New Zealand hill country, through irrigation of city
wastewater onto land and study of some of the most southerly soils on the planet in Antarctica. Meganisa fellow of the New Zealand Society of Soil Science (the fi rst woman to receive that honor). With
her husband Errol, Megan owns a small hill country sheep farm, which also includes about 60 acres
of New Zealand native forest, and so she has hands-on experience in managing the land.
Professor Darlene Zabowski has a BS in forest ecology and an MS and PhD in soil science. She
worked as a research soil scientist for the US Forest Service before transferring to the University of
Washington in 1993. She has conducted research on soils and taught introductory soils and advanced
classes in soil science for 30 years. She has received several awards for excellence in teaching. Darlene
has worked with many soils in various areas of the USA, as well as Canada, New Zealand, and China,
and participated in fi eld trips in many other parts of the world. Her research has mostly focused on
forest soilsbut has often included comparative research with soils from other ecosystems and a varietyof landscapes. Darlene is an avid hiker and enjoys keeping the soil in her vegetable garden healthy.
