Forest Soils Education: Bringing the Power of Curiosity, Risks, and Opportunities to Students.

All parts of a forest depend directly or indirectly on the forest soil.  Tree growth reflects the supplies of water and nutrients offered by the soil, just as the body of a grizzly bear is the product of solar energy and soil-derived resources.  Nothing is more fundamental in a forest than the soil, yet the belowground portion of the ecosystem remains a black box for most students of forests.  How can we foster knowledge and concern for forest soils?

Three approaches will be discussed, each with an emphasis on the essential stories of soils.  Traditional stand-alone forest soils course will remain essential to the education of foresters and many soil scientists.  Innovative opportunities can be develop to enhance education in these courses, but they’re already doing a strong job.  The second approach is the development of one- and two-week short courses focused on in-the-field education; many people who would like to know more about forest soils do not have the opportunity to take a regular course, but well-structured field courses would be a great innovation that we could develop at single locations, and as rotating locations across years. 

The third approach may reach the farthest:  infiltrating courses in ecology and environmental sciences.  Soil science has a checkered history in ecological education; sometimes soils are fully embraced as the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems, and other times they are ignored.  We can develop targeted approaches that make it very difficult for these courses to omit soils.  These approaches include individual scientists preparing one lecture, or one week’s set of lecture, and offering to present in ecology courses (many professors would always welcome guest lectures in important areas outside their own specialty).  The Forest, Range and Wildland Soils Division could collaborate on the preparation of targeted, on-line resources that could be used directly by instructors in ecology courses.  The Division could also encourage and foster one or more complete on-line offering of a complete forest soil course (through one university or a consortium). 

The success of each of these efforts would hinge on how compellingly we tell our stories about soils.  The first key is always hooking the fascination of each student, and we could do this by developing “essential stories” that can be followed with important details.  A set of essential stories might include these five tales:

Soils are alive, and they change

All parts of ecosystems trace back to the soil

The biological diversity of ecosystems is 99% a story about soils

Of all the knowledge we’ve gained in 10,000 years, understanding soil has been the most important for humanity; two-thirds of humanity could not be fed without this accumulated knowledge.

Forest soils offer one of the best-ever opportunities for fascinating and educating students; it’s up to us to help open the black box.