Content:  The course exposes students to advance treatments of factors of soil formation, influence of parent materials on weathering and soil formation with time, topography-soil relationship. The course also introduces students to soil stratigraphy, characteristics of tropical soils, soil micromorphology, principles and systems of taxonomic soil classification. It further emphasizes soil as a natural body of the landscape: its properties, distribution, behavior, and interpretations for diverse land uses.

Objective:
1.    To equip students with the recognition and description of soils; chemical, biological and physical processes of soil formation.  
2.    To expose student s to factors of soil formation. Interactions of soils with diverse ecosystems

Reading materials:
1. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Soil Survey Center. US
Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. (pdf copy available online
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/ref/?cid=nrcs142p2_054184) 
2.    Soil Survey Staff. 2014. Keys to Soil Taxonomy, 12th edn. USDA Natural Resources
Conservation Service, Washington, D.C. (pdf copy of full versions and simplified guide
are available online for at
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/survey/class/taxonomy/?cid=nrcs1
42p2_053580)
3.    Buol, S.W., R.J. Southard, Graham, R.C., and P.A. McDaniel. 2011. Soil Genesis and
Classification, 6th edn. Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken, N.J, USA. (Available as an ebook
via USU Libraries Online Catalog:
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/usulibraries/docDetail.action?docID=10577589)
4.    Schoeneberger, P.J., et al. 2012. Field Book for Describing and Sampling Soils, version 3.0