Welcome to Fundamentals of Soil Science

AGRN 278

Exploring the history of soil

science

https://www.soils.org/smithsonian/

The most visited natural history museum in the world (> 6 million

visitors annually) began telling the story of soil in July 2008.

Has anyone ever been to this museum ?

http://forces.si.edu/soils/index.html

Check it out

Have you been to this museum?

Coming to your neighborhood soon…

50,000 people during first 2 weeks of the exhibit

Ancient Egyptian art depicts tillage, irrigation and other soil management practices

Ancient Chinese manuscripts discuss 90 different types of soil !

In ~ 400 BC, Greek philosopher Xenophonwrote: “to be a successful farmer one must first know the nature of the soil”

What kind of plant is this ?

Ancient agriculturalists all around the world used legume plants to improve soil productivity

Bali, IndonesiaMachu Pichu, Peru

Dragon's Backbone, China Central Himalayas, India

Many ancient cultures used terracing

Overgrazing

Salinization

Gully erosion

Many ancient cultures caused severe soil degradation

Where is the soil ?

"We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot."

Leonardo Da Vinci

(1452-1519)

Jethro Tull, 1731

Have you ever heard of Jethro Tull?

Jethro Tull’s 3 row grain drill

Rainfall intensity map (highest rate expected in a 10 yr period)

http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/pages/h00046.asp

Average rainfall intensity in the US is much higher than in Europe !

Intense thunderstorms are common during

summer months in the mid-west and eastern

US

Justus von Liebig discovered, through the analysis of hundreds of

samples of plant ash, that plants contain elements

such as sodium, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus.

He concluded that the minerals contained in plants

must come from the soil and that without fertilization, the mineral content of soils could become exhausted,

rendering the land unproductive for agricultural

purposes. Justus von Liebig (1803 -1873)

Law of the

Minimum

http://nolimits.nmw.ac.uk/IEN/rotham.jpg

Rothamsted Experiment

Station

Lawes and Gilbert founded the first agricultural experiment station in 1843

Sir John Lawes Sir Henry Gilbert

Archive started in 1843

- currently contains over 200,000 bottles of hay, grain and soil

Why do they keep all these old samples ?

Old samples provide answers to new questions !

Morrow Plots at the University of Illinois

established in 1876

http://agronomyday.cropsci.uiuc.edu/2001/morrow-plots/

Morrow plots today – 3 of the 10 original plots remain

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1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

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Bluegrass

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Corn

Corn- oats

- clover

Learning from the Morrow Plots

Darwin’s last writings were about earthworms !

VV Dokuchaev (1846-1903)

Dokuchaev introduced the idea that geographic variation in soil could be explained in relation not only to geological factors, but also to climatic

and topographic factors, and the time available for soil formation.

EW Hilgard (1833-1916)

Eugene Woldemar Hilgard was born in Germany but his family settled in Belleville, IL in 1835 when he was 2. He returned to Europe in the late 1840s to

study chemistry. After returning to the US, he worked as a State Geologist , chemist in charge of the Smithsonian Institute’s lab and a professor of Mineralogy, Geology, Zoology and Botany at the U of Michigan before becoming a professor of

Agricultural Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of California Agricultural Experiment Stations. In 1892, he wrote a report on the

Relations of Climate to Soils, that was translated into several European languages and resulted in him receiving the Liebig medal for important advances in

agricultural science. He is considered the father of soil science in the US.

Milton Whitney 1901. Field operations of the Division of Soils. Washington, DC, US Department of Agriculture. 24 folding maps of various sizes to accompany the written report and housed in a chemise and slipcase.

Whitney believed that the fertility of

Midwest soils could not be exhausted !

Cyril Hopkins (right), head of the U of Illinois Department of Agronomy, and James H.Pettit (left), assistant in Soil Analysis at the Ag Experiment Station, take a soil sample from the Morrow PlotsCyril Hopkins (right), head of the U of Illinois Department of Agronomy, and James H.Pettit (left), assistant in Soil Analysis at the Ag Experiment Station, take a soil sample from the Morrow Plots

" ... it is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth truly consists."

“The farmer should be as familiar with the names of the ten essential elements of plant food as he is with the names of his ten nearest neighbors”

Cyril Hopkins of the U of Illinois disputed Whitney’s views on soil fertility.

Franklin Hiram King(1848-1911)

“ We desired to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to produce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense populations.. “

Farmers of Forty Centuries, 1911

The Dust Bowl – 1930s

Hugh Hammond Bennett(1881-1960)

Hans Jenny(1899- 1992)

Mendocino Staircase

You are the future of soil science !