Soil & Water Conservation

Soil and Water Conservation: An Annotated Bibliography is an ongoing project by Colby Moorberg. The aim of the project is to develop an open, alternative textbook for courses in soil and water conservation. Dr. Moorberg teaches AGRON 635 - Soil and Water Conservation at Kansas State University each fall semester. The goal is to develop a resource for soil and water conservation education that uses existing extension bulletins and publications, government publications, NRCS conservation practice standards, and other resources that are freely-available online. It is organized as an annotated bibliography with links to the online resources, and curated into relevant chapters and sections based on each topic. It will be licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).

We are currently seeking volunteers to contribute to this textbook. We primarily need volunteers to write annotations for the various resources already cited in the bibliography. We also need some resources identified for a few remaining sections of the textbook, and need photographs identified that are openly licensed or in the public domain that can be added to the textbook. We prefer volunteers be in the field of soil and water conservation as practitioners, higher education instructors and professors, or students under the supervision of their professors. However, not all tasks require experience in soil and water conservation, so people from other disciplines with relevant skill sets are also welcome and encouraged to participate. The goal is to complete the first draft of the textbook by August of 2019 (end of this summer), and have the final copy ready for publication by December of 2019.

If you are interested in volunteering, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page. Contributors will collaborate on Google Docs for each chapter, and communications among the team of contributors will happen primarily via Slack. Familiarity with those two platforms is preferred, but they're easy to get the hang of if you haven't used them before. A Google account and a Slack account will be necessary.

The outline of the textbook is as follows:

Chapter 1 - Introduction

1.1 - Introduction

1.2 - World History of Agriculture, Erosion, and Conservation

1.3 - Inventory of Soil and Water Resources

Chapter 2 - Key Concepts in Soil Science

2.1 - Basic Concepts in Soil Science

2.2 - Soil Quality

2.3 - Soil Health

2.4 - Soil Survey

Chapter 3 - Soil Erosion Processes

3.1 - Wind and Water Erosion

3.2 - Streambank Erosion

3.3 - Coastal Erosion

Chapter 4 - Soil Conservation Practices

4.1 - Farmland Conservation

4.2 - Stream and Streambank Conservation

4.3 - Wetland Conservation

4.4 - Coastline Conservation

4.5 - Conservation on Construction Sites and Disturbed Areas

4.6 - Forest, Range, and Wildland Conservation

Chapter 5 - Rehabilitation of Problem Soils

5.1 - Soils with Extreme pH

5.2 - Saline, Sodic, and Saline-sodic Soils

5.3 - Compacted Soils

Chapter 6 - Water Quantity and Quality Conservation

6.1 - Introduction to Hydrology

6.2 - Drainage

6.3 - Irrigation

6.4 - Water Conservation Principles and Practices

6.5 - Managing Watersheds for Water Quality

6.6 Water Quality in Urban Watersheds

Chapter 7 - Conservation Practices in a Broader Context

7.1 - The Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP)

7.2 - Conservation Practices and Climate Change

Chapter 8 - Conservation Agencies and Policies in the US

8.1 - Soil and Water Conservation Agencies in the US

8.2 - Soil and Water Conservation Policies in the US

Chapter 9 - Careers in Soil and Water Conservation

9.1 - Careers in Soil and Water Conservation

9.2 - Education

9.3 - Professional Societies

9.4 - Professional Certifications, Licensing, and Credentials

Header image: Cole, E. 1997. Field windbreaks in North Dakota protect the soil against wind erosion.