NSCSS: Teaching Soils

K-12 environmental science lessons, with emphasis on support resources for teachers seeking to increase awareness of soil science.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein. The more complex a problem is the more important imagination becomes in understanding it. The complex interdependencies that determine soil behavior make modelling soil functions particularly difficult. For a student to appreciate the study of soils, imagination is often more important than knowledge. Imagine our planet without soils. Imagine only raw parent material and lifeless dust. Sand and silt are still produced by glaciers, volcanoes and the action of water. Without microbial activity to produce soil structure, the sun would be blocked out by the blowing dust and rivers would clog with sediment. No anaerobic soil conditions would occur to produce distinctive wetlands. The continents would be dustbowls pocked with mud holes and broken by barren, rapidly eroding mountain ranges. Our deep oceans would be shallow seas filled with sediments. This was our planet before soils were formed.	Soil Teaching Resources The Globe Programme: Why Study Soils? (PDF) NASA - Soil Science Education Michigan State University - Center for Microbial Ecology - Microbe Zoo Dirtland "Every time you walk on the ground you step on billions of microbes."

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