Completely revised and updated, incorporating almost a decade's worth of developments in this field, Environmental Soil Science, Third Edition, explores the entire reach of the subject, beginning with soil properties and reactions and moving on to their relationship to environmental properties and reactions. Keeping the organization and writing style that made previous editions bestsellers, the author addresses the definitions of environmental science, ecology, and soil science, underscoring their combination into environmental soil science.
The book highlights the live biological constituents that make up the soil, exploring the changes made by agricultural operations and other human activities that lead to changes in the environment and our natural ecosystem. These include causes, effects, and solutions for acid rain, global warming, and destruction of the ozone layer. The author also provides extensive coverage of soilless agriculture, hydroponics, fish farming, vanishing biodiversity due to the destruction of jungles and the rain forest, and what to do about it.
New in the Third Edition:
- Al Gore's Nobel Prize winning politics on global warming and apocalyptic predictions
- Biofuel production from agricultural trash and the controversy over using corn for alcohol production
- Advances in biotechnology and the issues surrounding golden rice, flavr savr tomato, roundup ready plants, and GM crops
- The effects of agricultural operations and other human activities on changing soil properties and environment
- Introduction of a new soil group, Paddy soils, a unique man made soil formed by centuries of rice cultivation
- Blue Revolution and marine biodiversity
- Use of eutrophication in aquaculture
Growing ecological awareness has put the spotlight on all environmental disciplines, and environmental soil science is no exception. This has created broader interest in what has traditionally been a fundamental subject. This book tackles matters which must be urgently addressed due to the mounting evidence of climate change.