Soil Management: Building a Stable Base for Agriculture

by Jerry L. Hatfield, Thomas J. Sauer

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.

432 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 2011

About the author

Jerry L. Hatfield, Ph.D. is Laboratory Director and Supervisory Plant Physiologist at the National Laboratory for Agriculture and The Environment. Dr. 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.

Dr. Hatfield's research emphasis is on the interactions among the components of the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum and their linkage to air, water, and soil quality. His focus has been on the evaluation of farming systems and their response to water and nitrogen interactions across soils and the evaluation of remote sensing methods to quantify spatial variation within fields for application to risk management tools.