Syllabus

Lecture Presentations

Lecture Schedule

References



 


SOIL 557 – Advanced Soil Genesis & Classification

Syllabus
______________________________________________

Fall 2012


Instructor:
Office:
Office Phone:
Email:


Paul McDaniel
115 Ag Science Bldg.
885-7012
paulm@uidaho.edu

Course Website: http://webpages.uidaho.edu/soil557

Scope of Course:
• review (concepts of pedology, terminology, classification)
• modeling soil formation
• environmental controls on soil formation
• pedologic processes
• field and laboratory techniques for pedology applications
• soil mapping

Text:
There is no textbook for the course, but selected readings from a variety of sources will be assigned throughout the semester. The references listed below will be useful, and if not available from the library, can be checked out from my office for short periods. This is by no means a complete list of references and there are a number of others that are potentially useful.

Soil Genesis and Classification. 6th ed. 2011. S.W. Buol, R.J. Southard, R.C. Graham, and P.A. McDaniel. Wiley-Blackwell.

Soils:  Genesis and Morphology. 2005. R. Schaetzl and S. Anderson. Cambridge Univ. Press, New York.

Soil Taxonomy. 1999. Soil Survey Staff. US Gov. Print. Office, Washington, DC.
Available from: ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/NSSC/Soil_Taxonomy/tax.pdf

Keys to Soil Taxonomy. 2010. 11th ed. Soil Survey Staff. USDA-NRCS.
Available from: http://soils.usda.gov/technical/classification/tax_keys/index.html

Encyclopedia of Soil Science. 2002. Edited by R. Lal. Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York.

Soil Mineralogy with Environmental Applications. 2002. Co-edited by J.B Dixon and D.G. Schulze. SSSA, Madison, WI.

Handbook of Soil Science. 2011. 2nd ed. Edited by Huang, Li, and Sumner. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

Soils and Geomorphology. 1999. P.W. Birkeland. Oxford Univ. Press, NY.
Handbook of Pedology. 1998. P. Duchaufour. A.A. Balkema Publishers, Brookfield, VT.

Journals:  Soil Science Society of America Journal, Geoderma, Soil Science, European Journal of Soil Science, Catena, to name just a few…

http://soils.cals.uidaho.edu/soilorders (12 Soil Orders web site)

Course Components:
Exams:  There will be two exams in this course – a mid-term and a final. The format for these exams will be predominantly essay. These exams will be worth 40% of the course grade.

Class Participation/Presentations/Homework:
Everyone taking this course is expected to contribute on regular basis to the class discussions. Therefore, upon coming to class you should be fully prepared to discuss assignments and course material.
One goal of this course is to develop your professional communication skills. You will therefore be asked to give several short presentations during the semester. These presentations may include reviews of scientific papers, lecture topics, and/or other assignments. The purpose of these presentations is two-fold: to broaden your understanding of a particular topic and to help develop speaking/teaching skills. As such, it is important to make these presentations well organized, concise, and informative.
There will be a number of homework assignments given throughout the semester. Assignments will be graded on the basis of being completed in a timely manner, content, and professional appearance.
Although there is no scheduled laboratory for this course, we will go on 1 weekend field trip to northern Idaho (mid to late September) and hopefully visit some local areas of interest.

Report/Project:
Each student will complete a term project/report – depending on interests, this can be done either individually or as a class project. We’ll discuss this in more detail. My lab (Room 145) will be available for use during the semester for analytical work, but space is limited and any work you want to do must be scheduled around other activities. Anita Falen is the lab supervisor and all use of the lab facilities must be cleared with her.

Grading:

mid-term/final exam   40%
class participation/presentations/homework 40%
project/report   20%
  100%