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

By Daniel Deboucherville Richter, Daniel D. Richter Jr, Daniel Markewitz

Book Overview

Across the world, soils are managed with an intensity and at a geographic scale never before attempted, yet we know remarkably little about how and why managed soils change through time. Understanding Soil Change explores a legacy of soil change in south-eastern North America, a region of global ecologic, agricultural and forestry significance: from the acidic soils of primary hardwood forests that covered the region until about 1800, through the marked transformations affected by long-cultivated cotton, to contemporary soils of rapidly growing and intensively managed pine forests. These well-documented records significantly enrich the science of ecology and pedology, and provide valuable lessons for land management throughout the world. The book calls for the establishment of a global network of soil-ecosystem studies, like the invaluable Calhoun study on which the book is based, to provide further information on sustainable land management, vital as human demands on soil continue to increase.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521039436
• ISBN13: 9780521039437
• Release Date: August 2007
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"