transect points

In a previous post I provided an oblique link to a news release: Climate Change Alters Ocean Chemistry. It makes reference to conditions resonating with the theory of biorhexistacy:

The research team, which included Caldeira, Elizabeth M. Griffith and Adina Paytan of the University of California, Santa Cruz, plus two other colleagues, studied core samples of deep oceanic sediment recovered from the Pacific Ocean Basin. By analyzing the calcium isotopes in grains of the mineral barite in different layers, they determined that between 13 and 8 million years ago the ocean’s calcium levels shifted dramatically. The shift corresponds to the growth of the Antarctic ice sheets during the same time interval. Because of the huge volume of water that became locked up in the ice cap, sea level also dropped.

“The climate got colder, ice sheets expanded, sea level dropped, and the intensity, type, and extent of weathering on land changed,” explains Griffith.

“This caused changes in ocean circulation and in the amount and composition of what rivers delivered to the ocean,” adds Paytan. “This in turn impacted the biology and chemistry of the ocean.”

These folks are saying that momentous changes in oceanic chemistry recorded in the sediment record must have been predicated by equally momentous changes in soil chemistry, changes tied to both atmospheric carbon dioxide content and climatic conditions.

From a pedologist's view, it is clear that under the expanded humid, warm, stable conditions envisioned by H. Erhart for biostasis, we would see deeper residual soils and more rapid formation of argillic horizons. In terms of soil taxonomic orders (USDA), more intense chemical weathering would cause the expansion of inceptisols at the expense of mollisols, ultisols at the expense of alfisols, and oxisols at the expense of ultisols.

Caldeira and company tie warm climate to higher river calcium content, but strongly implicate higher atmospheric carbon dioxide as the primary driver of increased chemical weathering. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels do not appear to be part of Erhart's construct, but could certainly enhance these pedogenetic trends.

Acid rain alarm bells are ringing faintly in the distance at this point. But it is a false alarm. Rain water pH is due mostly to equilibrium with atmospheric carbon dioxide. The carbonic acid formed buffers rain drop pH to 5.6, and higher atmospheric carbon dioxide increases the carbonic acid content, but it doesn't lower pH below 5.6. Other constituents accomplish that. Thus increased atmospheric carbon dioxide isn't being implicated in some futuristic acid rain scenario.

Oxisols, ultisols and spodosols would increase in extent with increased soil weathering. But could it also mean lower plant disease, and more nutritious crops? Increased carbonic acid would drive faster pedogenesis, as would increased the biological activity stimulated by higher carbon dioxide. For soil, that would mean a richer solute content in the soil water, more rapid formation of secondary minerals, more eluviation or translocation of minerals with percolation. To the list of pedological shifts at the soil order level, we can add the expansion of spodosols at the expense of inceptisols.

Something very positive can be expected for soil that is not captured in the shifting soil order paradigm. For plants and soil microbes, richer solute content would mean greater availability of mineral nutrients. In soil husbandry and slow food circles, higher mineral availability translates to healthier soil, lower plant disease, and more nutritious harvests. What the shifting soil order paradigm does signal is that soils will be at greater risk of losing their fertility to leaching. Having the soil chockablock full of biochar will be essential to mitigate this last effect. Let's start now.

(Recycled from nscss.org)

The Theory of Biorhexistasy describes climatic conditions necessary for periods of soil formation (pedogenesis) separated by periods of soil erosion. Proposed by pedologist H. Erhart in 1951, the theory defines two climatic phases: biostasy and rhexistasy.

If I recall, H. Erhart figured this out while on the Congo river contemplating a low sediment load in a high rainfall, potentially highly erosive setting. Impressive. There is a soil science truism that clean water is hungry water, and can't wash across or through the land without taking some with. From a soil scientist's perspective, water is soil in highly dilute form. (So is air.)

Reading between the lines, I don't think Erhart had a research budget much beyond travel expenses. He simply deduced from what he knew of tropical weathering that the river had to be laden with dissolved minerals, calcium especially, washed from the soil by percolating rain water. Groundbreaking as that was in its own right, he didn't stop there. Using induction, he reasoned that when similar conditions dominated it ages past, rivers would have delivered abundant calcium to ancient seas subsequently (at the close of the age, perhaps) yielding vast limestone deposits. He saw these ages as lush, moist, and warm with accelerated chemical weathering accompanied by the formation of deep soils. Biostasy. Between periods of biostasy, he envisioned conditions dominated instead by physical weathering: severe fluctuations in temperature and moisture, sparse vegetation, shallow exposed soils, rivers choked with sediments, but with low solute content. This insight informs interpreting endokarstic sediments(Yves Quinif) in Europe where stalacite formation is observed to be greatest, and with least sediment, during interglacial periods due to higher dissolved calcium content, and less soil erosion.

Simply as a mental exercise, consider a scenario where atmospheric carbon dioxide hits 1200 ppm 200 years from now. In the context of biorhexistasy, what is going to dominate? biostasy, rhexistasy or will it be something well outside H. Erhart's elegant construct? Considering that the Congo and the sediment laden Nile coexist in the same age, it is certainly conceivable that biorhexistasy will continue to play out differently based on location, with neither dominating. But the undeniable effect of higher carbon dioxide is higher chemical weathering. So maybe rhexistasy during the transition, followed by biostasy.

(Recycled from nscss.org)

Searching on the term "soil husbandry", I came across this rather concise web presentation on environment-sensitive farming. It covers a wide variety of crops, cropping systems and soil types, so I am sure most will find something in here that is new. For me it was tramlines. Enjoy!

Charcoal cannot replace the need for adding mineral nutrients.

I am an unabashed charcoal enthusiast. Used properly, adding charcoal to soil improves biomass production and soil health. Sometimes dramatically when soil productivity is low. Certainly part of the effect is increased nitrogen use efficiency: less N lost to nitrification and leaching. Charcoal also tends to be associated with higher post harvest soil levels of P and K for reasons that are not entirely clear. Perhaps this effect also is due to increased efficiency.

Most TP enthusiasts, myself included, are convinced that the most mysterious effects from adding charcoal relate to soil biology, more than they relate to direct physical and chemical effects, although those realms play important roles also. And, in keeping with my previous post, it seems clear to me that increased energy efficiency is a critical bit here. Plants and microbes are growing more biomass with less effort for reasons that can't be entirely explained by traditional nutrient-based perspectives. Yes, the charcoal adds potassium, yes it raises soil pH, yes it increases soil water and nutrient holding capacity. But the results speak to more, much more.

The behavior of charcoal amended soil seems to defy the limits of the soil-biology system understood by traditional science. However, it would be entirely foolish to think that simple soil nutritional requirements are not still in play. Nutrient deficiencies limit living systems. Charcoal may promote efficiencies that help stretch the budget in regards to those limits, but in the end, the most limiting nutrient before adding charcoal is probably still going to be the most limiting nutrient after adding charcoal.

What got me thinking about this was consulting soil scientist Doug Edmeades’ posts on soil organic matter. The first, Carbon farming: take-off or rip-off, explored how carbon sequestration efforts can cut both ways. The second, Soil Organic Matter Matters, hits on the most-limiting-nutrient.

Pasture plants need 16 nutrients. Without all 16 the clover will disappear, the pasture will be N deficient, the quality grasses will fail, pasture production would collapse followed by a need to cut back the stocking rate and, given sufficient years, a farm would be back to native pastures and bush. In the process soil carbon levels would decline.

Collapsed pasture production is no idle threat. We know that the collapse of legumes in pasture systems in Europe and in the eastern US helped motivate the expansion of the western US. Against that historical backdrop, Benjamin Franklin famously demonstrated sulfur deficiency when he added gypsum to alfalfa to form the words "This has been plastered". Doug Edmeades mentions this because soil carbon sequestration enthusiasts seem to have temporarily lost track of these limits. The same caution applies to charcoal.

There is great potential for increasing productivity through judicious use of charcoal. However, TP enthusiasts must not lose sight of the fact that charcoal cannot replace the need for adding mineral nutrients.

Been following the sludge story from Hephzibah, Ga.? If you work in support of biosolids, like I do, you should be.

Andy McElmurray, a farmer in Hephzibah, Ga., fed his dairy cows silage that had been fertilized with sewage sludge laced with heavy metals. More than 300 of them died.

In February, a federal judge ordered the Department of Agriculture to compensate McElmurray for losses incurred when his land was poisoned between 1979 and 1990 by applications of Augusta, Ga., sewage sludge. That sludge contained levels of arsenic that were two times higher than EPA standards allow; of thallium (a heavy metal used as rat poison) that were 25 times higher; and of PCBs that were 2,500 times higher.

What's more, milk from his neighbor's dairy farm was sent to market with thallium levels 120 times higher than those allowed by the EPA in public drinking water.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo was particularly critical of the EPA and the University of Georgia for having endorsed "unreliable, incomplete and, in some cases, fudged" data about the Augusta sludge. That corrupt data was presented to the National Academy of Sciences, which then cited it in their July 2002 assertion that sewage sludge does not pose a risk to public health.

Alaimo wrote, "Senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of EPA's biosolids program."

Our biosolids have incredible fertilizer value in terms of phosphorus and nitrogen, which is what pulls me into the mix. But it is valuable only to the degree that it can be trusted. Some biosolids can be trusted, some cannot. Let's do this thing, people.

Soil has a problem. It is eroding faster than it is being made. That's a given in these times of relative geologic stability. Most soil was formed in depositional material. Without sedimentary deposits being exposed by tectonic processes, without substantial volcanic ash fall, without the continental glaciation producing silt, and without the global wind storms and cataclysmic post-glacial flooding to redistribute that silt, we basically have to wait on the next climate change re-boot for our next era of major soil replenishment. In these trying times on the downhill slide from peak soil resources, we'll have to make better soil from the soil that we have left.

We would be well served if we stopped manufacturing unnecessary body soaps and scents. They end up in sludge, er biosolids and, as is necessary, on the land, where they can have unintended consequences. Let's just stop manufacturing the offending molecules.

In 2003, the Snohomish County Public Works Department published a remarkable manual with a simple title: Building Soil (pdf). Promoting sediment-free stormwater, it encouraged builders to embrace the wisdom of retaining native soil and vegetation, and to question the value of turning soil into dirt for no good reason. From a building perspective, soil is a valuable construction material manufactured from a low cost/ low value soil resource feedstock. The thinking goes like this: Manipulating soil tidies up a site and adds value. Stormwater regulations interfere with the ability to add value, thus the disconnect.

Enter the Washington Organic Recycling Council which has a new site, www. buildingsoil.org, with a new and refreshingly non-regulatory spin for convincing builders to buy into the principles in the Building Soil manual. The pitch goes like this: Avoiding disturbance around the building footprint, in a sense, doing nothing, confers a marketable value on that soil resource.

New home buyers say they are happy to pay more for a healthy, easy to care for landscape – and that starts with the soil.

A timely message in a buyers' market.

Researchers at the University of Melbourne are holding a conference to discuss the importance of greenhouse gas emissions from soils.

A major concern is nitrous oxide from fertilizer, manure and biomass applications.

"300 times more potent than CO2, so even small emissions of this non-CO2 gas can make a considerable contribution to global warming” says Dr Stefan Arndt.

“When nitrogen is added to a wheat field as fertilizer or added to a pasture through animal faeces or clover swards, a part of the nitrogen can be lost as nitrous oxide, and when the weather conditions are right this can lead to large emissions of nitrous oxide” says Dr Eckard.

...not widely known [is] that soils can actually [take] methane out of the atmosphere. “Forest soils are especially efficient at taking up methane” says Dr Livesley.

At the present time there is not much knowledge about the magnitude of these non-CO2 emissions...

(revised May 18, 2007:)It is interesting that non-CO2 GHGs, like nitrous dioxide (NO2), aren't more in the news, considering their potential impact and (for NO2) a fascinating pattern of anthropogenicity.


Image source: Greenhouse gases, by Anyday.se

edit: revised intro to N02 map - yet again as my level of understanding evolves

The New York Times has an article about selling carbon credit through the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).:

An acre of pine forest captures and holds one to two metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which it uses for photosynthesis. Untilled cropland holds a third of a ton of carbon per acre, and rangeland holds up to a fifth of a ton. The sequestered carbon dioxide is measured by soil tests before and after the planting.

Carbon dioxide credits now sell for about $4 a metric ton. Mandatory restrictions, experts say, could increase the price to $12 or higher. In Europe, the cost of a credit sold for sequestering carbon dioxide has reached $20, and even $30, a ton.

The market for carbon credits seems to hover between $3 and $4. A review of past CCX newsletters reveals sporadic volume, with common fluctuations of $0.50 to $0.75 per metric ton per month. The New York Times article suggests that biological sequestration will ultimately be replaced with geological sequestration. Expectations of sustaining $20 or $30 a ton seem unrealistic.

$3-$4 is far better than the $0.25 that the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington received for forested land in the 1990s.

The Tri-Societies' science policy blog has a post about Farming Carbon:

Currently, farmers who wish to profit from the sequestration potential of their soils can sell carbon credits on the (CCX).

Science is needed to better quantify the carbon flux and carbon sinks.

At present, aggregators don't attempt to gauge the carbon impact of individual farms nor do they quantify counterbalancing emissions of traces gases. Hopefully, ASA/CSSA/SSSA members can play a constructive role in the CCX, providing the scientific basis on which aggregators will improve their climate accounting.

I would like to see more discussion on the nuts and bolts of accounting and verification.

Flickr Source: George sampling 3/2/07 ESA Common

For Carol, over at the Garden Bloggers Book Club, who comments on a previous post:

...be interesting in knowing how soil science has changed in the last 25+ years. I took an introductory class in soil science in 1978 or 79. And I don't recall much discussion about what was living in the soil. Has that become more of an emphasis?

The short answer to that is, yes.

Let's take a bit of a look back to those times. I took my soils classes mostly in 1974 through 1976 at UC Davis. One was a soil microbiology class, and it covered many of the soil-food-web fundamentals that Jeff Lowenfels expands on in "Teaming with Microbes", but it touched only briefly on species interdependence. Ecology was a fairly new field at the time, and much that we know now as soil ecology was just a glimmer in our eyes.

I took an introductory level ecology class in 1973. My recollection was this was only the second year an ecology class was available at UC Davis.

The emphasis in soil microbiology, at the time, was on the metabolic processes the soil biology contributes to nutrient cycling: respiration, immobilization, symbiotic nitrogen fixation, nitrification, ammonification. Carbon:nitrogen ratios of disked in residue were a big deal due to microbial immobilization. There was a strong emphasis on bacteria, and I don't recall anything said about mycorrhizal fungi.

I remember a deep respect for the living component of soil among my pedologic-oriented instructors: "Dirt is soil without life" was drilled into us countless times whenever we slipped up and used the term "dirt" when we should have used "soil".

My edaphic-oriented instructors were not as soil biology oriented. But this was before "soil health" and "soil quality" movements in agricultural soil science became established. It was also before the interest in wetland soil process, bioremediation, protecting groundwater, and understanding why septic systems fail, combined to drive dramatic changes in edaphology.

Edaphology is the study of soil (edaphic) effects. Until about 25 years ago, it mostly synonymous with agricultural soil science as distinguished from pedology, the study of soil in its natural setting. Edaphology now encompasses the new field of environmental soil science, with its more formal emphasis on interdependent living processes in soil.

Soil science has gone through dramatic changes in the last 25+ years.

Picture Source: The Divine Soil
Originally uploaded by Room With A View.

Technorati Tags: soil science history ecology edaphology environment

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My anticipated copy of "Teaming with Microbes" has arrived. While I can't comment on the full text with any authority yet, I can say that it is well organized and has an extensive index (8 pages). It pleased me no end to see "soil science 28 - 42". There is also a valuable guide to labs and suppliers (4 pages). A supplier of mycorhhizal fungi here in Spokane is going to be getting a new customer.

My current soil obsession, bio-char, the foundational ingredient in terra preta nova, is disappointingly not mentioned. I have gotten the impression that Elaine Ingham, who has achieved demi-goddess standing in soil-web circles, was unswervingly skeptical of charcoal in large volumes as a soil amendment at the time the book went to publication, so I am not particularly surprised. In the post I saw, she based her concern on charcoal's high C:N ration putting soils out of balance. I'm chalking this up to fear of the unfamiliar. Too bad. Elaine Ingham is highly influential. When she comes around, her endorsement will save lives.

My restaurateur grandfather had a personal test to see if a chef was up to his standards: if the butter dish arrived without ice, he lowered his expectation that anything else could be properly prepared. I make similar menu-wide judgements on my orders of eggs-over-easy and chile rellenos. My acid test for an elightened organic gardening book is the treatment of glomalin (recalcitrant mycorhhizal fungally produced glycoprotein that accounts for 1/3 of world soil carbon). It is mentioned on page 37 (see familiar glomalin photo on page 39), so things are looking up at this point.

Last September, E/The Environmental Magazine, published The Scoop On Dirt: Why We Should all Worship the Ground We Walk On by Tamsyn Jones. It is beautifully written, but settles into a tired view of soil. As a soil scientist, it irks me that this essay flubs the opportunity to celebrate the unfolding understanding of this dark and patient resource. An expectation of higher aspirations is created by the title and the opening prose.

It’s one of nature’s most perfect contradictions: a substance that is ubiquitous but unseen; humble but essential; surprisingly strong but profoundly fragile. It nurtures life and death; undergirds cities, forests and oceans; and feeds all terrestrial life on Earth. It is a substance few people understand and most take for granted. Yet, it is arguably one of Earth’s most critical natural resources—and humans, quite literally, owe to it their very existence.

From the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the air we breathe, humanity depends upon the dirt beneath our feet. Gardeners understand this intuitively; to them, the saying “cherish the soil” is gospel. But for the better part of society, dirt barely gets a sideways glance. To most, it’s just part of the background, something so obvious it’s ignored.

Even among the environmentally minded, soil sags well below the radar of important causes. But the relationship between soil quality and other aspects of environmental health is intricately entwined. What’s more, it’s a relationship that encompasses a vast swath of territory, from agricultural practices to global climate change, and from the well being of oceans to that of people.

Ultimately it works into a description of Third World soil erosion, chemical burn-out and exhausted productivity. We are told that without aid from the powers that be, the soil, and those it supports, will suffer. I accept that on face value, without hesitation. Third World nations are requesting training in soil management and nutrients to replenish their exhausted soil. We should help them in this.

There is also a short Part II essay, covering factory farms and sustainable farm management. Sidebars provide information on desertification, sludge, the NRCS, soil science as a vanishing skill, and a John Havlin interview.

There is much to like about this piece. Soil seldom gets such professional treatment. However, because it is so well-written – she is a journalist after all – one may not easily spot that some of the observations are presented as foregone conclusions, yet are not supported or warranted. Most of the first 20 paragraphs are full of solum-esque richness. By the end at the 60th paragraph, all the good will banked during the beginning of the essay has been mortgaged by hyperbole...

"Only 8% of our land is arable. This means...", as the context amplifies, that the remaining 92% is "too inhospitable to support our species." (paragraph 8)

"...the practice of destroying soils by torching ... has been employed by armies..." (paragraph 21)

...and mind numbing oversimplification.

"...soils are eroding faster than they can be rebuilt." (paragraph 29)

"The fastest soil regeneration is 200 years, but it can take a million years". (paragraph 30)

The more I learn about soil, the more disservice I see in this type of "Soil Erosion for Dummies" pablum. For one it implies that, absent man's influence, all soils naturally improve with time. Only the young ones do. Nature is not so kind to old soil and soil management must be guided by this fact.

What qualifies as "soil regeneration"? It has always bothered me that regenerating the living processes in the topsoil and regenerating substratum soil mass from the bottom up are treated as not worth differentiating. Still. 80 years, 500-1000 years, or more years to regenerate an inch of soil: You can tell people any number you want, everybody in the know understands its just a theatrical device. A million years is highly theatrical. It implies waiting for a climatic shift or a geologic system reboot.

From a great beginning, the essay wears down to looking at the world through the eyes of a soil science seemingly frozen in time. Conspicuous by its absence are post 1950s discoveries like terra preta and glomalin, discoveries that hint at workings of soil health beyond our current understanding. I choose these examples because they hold the promise of achieving unprecedented soil vitality in the arable soils most of concern in the essay.

Terra preta [updated link (1/29/07)] has been actively researched since the early 1960s. It is a key component of carbon negative fuel production. Terra preta is made by adding charcoal to soil, but total soil carbon continues to build long after additions of charcoal stop. Charcoal producing household wood-gas stoves designs are available. Simple and efficient, these can be used to establish terra preta nova on a scale that matches the Third World's soil carbon crisis. Larger adaptations of the process are being developed commercially. A solar furnace (pdf) alternative is promising.

Glomalin was discovered in 1996. Produced by fungi from carbohydrates supplied by plant allies, glomalin holds 1/3 of global soil carbon, and in a recalcitrant form to boot. It dramatically improves soil health. Low soil nutrient status tends to favor its production, as plants are encouraged to fuel and hydrate their fungal allies in exchange for phosphorus. Perhaps a similar process is supported in terra preta, and accounts for the mysteriously rising tide of soil carbon.

Without a celebration of the ongoing exploration of soil, one is left with the impression that soil scientists have long since exhausted the soil of its potential for significant and exciting discovery.

My final beef is with the John Havlin interview. Why do our soil science leaders continue to get sucked into overplaying the agriculture card? Maybe Charles Kellog should have pounded SSSA a little harder back when he had a chance.

"Many people have the vague notion that soil science is merely a phase of agronomy and deals only with practical soil management for field crops. Whether we like it or not this is the image many have of us." Charles E. Kellog, A challenge to American soil scientists: On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Soil Science Society of America. Soil Science Society of America Proceedings, 25(6):419-423, 1961.

This week I field validated my hyporheic confinement hypothesis for a site I have been working on.

I had been out mapping wetlands and characterizing a system of ditches and stream-like features. Lucky for me, a chinook was blowing: soil thawed sufficiently to be observed each afternoon. With not-normal effects on vegetation and soil chemistry from seasonal saturation by a nearby irrigation ditch, I suspect these two particular wetlands would delineate smaller, jurisdictionally speaking, come the growing season in March. But I don't know for certain. The combination of river and irrigation induced hydrology can be confounding.

Many of the stream-like ditches used at the site to accommodate irrigation water and return flows were dry. For the ones that had flow I had a devil of a time getting into them safely to measure their cross sectional profile. Prior to my client's purchase for a residential/golf course project, the property was used to run a cow/calf operation. Much of the lower ditch (15 - 30 feet across) has 20 plus inches of anaerobic mud and manure, a sure recipe for disaster for the hip wader approach. The occasional gravel bar saved me from having to pontoon for my data.

The ditches are running with mostly hyporheic/phreatic Yakima River water. I say mostly, because some snowmelt was running in a small ditch onto the site from the upland terrace onto the floodplain. The Yakima is 1000 feet away and was running near bank-full. The ditches are running a few inches below the ordinary high water scour line, and I feel certain the two hydrologies are connected.

The concept that hyporheic/phreatic hydrology can reach this far is a challenge for most folks, including my fellow project team members. How can river groundwater hydrology be feeding it when the ditch is higher than the river? The answer lies in subsurface gravel filled channels. Rivers lose and gain the same water repeatedly. In losing reaches, water drops out of the bottom into permeable gravel filled channels. Where these channels are covered with less permeable material, confinement can result in a considerable buildup of gravitational head. Where the gravel channel reaches to the margin of the floodplain, confined water can upwell at considerable distance from the river, and can be confused with irrigation derived groundwater.

In the Yakima Valley, with its 500,000 irrigated acres and its network of leaky canals, irrigation induced seasonal wetlands are common. In the floodplain, upwelling hyporheic/phreatic river water can be masked by irrigation induced hydrology, but only while the canals are full, or recently so. During this January visit, long after irrigation diversions have ceased, there was no mistaking the dominant river-induced hydrology at the site. Especially telling was the water level in an existing stream-like ditch compared with the newly constructed closed ditch intended become its replacement. Closed at the upper end, the upwelling river derived groundwater flowing in the new ditch was higher by 14 inches than the water flowing in the adjacent, topographically upgradient, closer-to-canal, older, connected, irrigation district return flow structure. 14 inches is also consistent with seepage on the bank of the older ditch structure. In the photo these are separated by only 60 feet.

These 2 ditches provide the strongest validation I've seen in the 20 years I have been observing and puzzling over hyporheic confinement and upwelling.

Tech Tags: sample soil scientist wetland consulting hydrology yakima water drainage environment irrigation regulation

Renewed soil science licensing efforts are underway in Washington State. Supporting them is a new website. Titled Soil Science Licensing, the site is available to become a clearinghouse for all soil science licensing efforts. It links to the best available information, including the list of soil science licensing boards maintained by the Soil WikiProject.

For now, the Soil Science Licensing site effort is strictly focussed on Washington state's efforts. The latest revision (pdf) (December 7, 2006) has been posted and I have one concern with the new wording:

The practice of soil science does not include design work, such as would be carried out by either engineers, as defined in RCW 18.43.020 or architects, as defined in RCW 18.08.320.

We need something along these lines, but the term "design work" is not specifically defined in the cited sections, but is referred to somewhat broadly. Is this going to be a problem? Perhaps someone with experience in one of the licensed states can comment.

Researchers find that soil phosphorus levels may affect plant phytate levels as much as plant breeding. Phytate is the principal storage form of phosphorus in many plant tissues, especially bran and seeds.

Phytate is generally not bioavailable to humans and non-ruminant animals. Accordingly, there has been a push to develop low-phytate crop varieties. Not only is the phosphorus in low-phytate grain crops more digestible by people, low-phytate grains free up minerals essential to human nutrition: zinc, manganese and iron. This new research shows that grain raised with higher levels of soil phosphorus can have higher levels of phytate. I have not read ($) the journal article, but my thoughts are that the discovery of this soil connection was not anticipated: normally nutritional availability does not decrease with increased soil nutrient levels. If this relationship can be validated, it is an important breakthrough that affects human nutrition, efficient use of phosphorus (a non-renewable resource), farm costs, and environmental quality.

Swine and poultry operations benefit. Low-phytate feed results in lower manure phosphorus for these non-ruminants, a welcome prospect for waste management and addressing water quality concerns. Swine rations often need phosphorus added to ensure bone and muscle development for rapid growth, driving the market development for new, low-phytate crop varieties. The alternative to low-phytate feed is to use a feed additive, phytase. Currently, neither approach is particularly cheap.

Appreciation and attribution:
Sugar Creek Farm for a great photo.
GMO Pundit aka David Tribe for posting on this.

($) According to my read of HighWire Publishers Free Online Full-text Articles list, the journal article will be made available at no cost April 2, 2008 (18 months after publication).

This UPI article is inspiring. Appreciate the dedication of the subject and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for supporting this work.

Peter Hotez has spearheaded a 25-year fight to eradicate hookworm, and 12 other neglected diseases, illnesses of the poor and powerless. These ailments bear frightening names such as leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomiasis and schistosomiasis. Some are vector-borne diseases, spread through animals or mosquitoes, others are bacterial, and many more are caused by worm infections.
"When you work on a neglected disease, you're neglected by your scientific colleagues. It's hard to be taken seriously sometimes," Hotez says.
"He's the ideal scientist -- someone who is honest, works hard, and is passionate about what he is doing," says H.R. Shepherd, the chairman of the Sabin Institute who has known Peter for almost 10 years.
Hotez is developing the world's first hookworm vaccine, now in Phase 1 trials, and he'll know for sure if it works by 2011.

The above excerpts were rearranged a tad.

Land treatment of industrial waste water can save energy. Mechanical aeration for treatment demands large quantities of electrical power. In land treatment, this is replaced by passive aeration. The energy cost reduction can be well in excess of the payments needed to purchase the land. A disadvantage of land application of waste waste is that it can contribute to ground water salinity.
Crops and soil treatment do little to remove mineral salinity from applied waters. How much salinity in ground water is too much? Salinity doesn't threaten health as much as it taints taste. This creates a dilemma. Environmental regulators are challenged to defend enforcement limits based on aesthetics with the same vigor as criteria based on human health. They are particularly challenged when the industries contributing to groundwater salinity are valued employers contributing to rural economies. But defend water quality standards they must.
Salt load in land applied waste water is considered by many to be the single most important challenge facing the industries which use land application to treat waste water. Particularly sensitive to this issue are briners, cheese processors and some electronics manufacturers. Among waste water spray field management advisers the consensus is that saline waste water spray field operations should avoid sites where the discharge can't be diluted by substantial rainfall and/or groundwater flux. In short, dilution is the only practical solution when it comes to salts in waste water. If the operation is located in an area that does not enjoy the benefits of natural dilution, the brine portion of the waste water stream can be segregated and transported to an area that does. Not an easy task but not unprecedented. A municipal waste water treatment plant discharging to a substantial body of water is a logical choice for receiving the brine.
These comments are prompted by a news article today in the Sacramento Bee (free registration required): Hilmar faces more pollution rules. Cheese factory agrees to give water quality board more authority.
[follow-up comment from Chris Bowman, Sac-Bee: The brine collected from the reverse osmosis filters is hauled to an East Bay MUD treatment plant.]

A Capital Press article (subscription) by Doug Warnock promotes grazing in riparian buffer areas, saying:

When grazed properly, forage plants in the riparian zone can be stimulated to re-grow and contribute greatly to the health of the ecosystem.
The grazing process helps break up capped soil...

Up until a few months ago I was enthusiastic about preserving soil crusts. Some reasoned criticism of this perspective has helped moderate my opinion.

... stimulates the incorporation of plant tissue into the soil resulting in increased organic matter and the animals add minerals to the soil. It also helps control the growth of woody plants, which can shade out desirable grasses and forbs that hold the soil on stream banks and filter out soil particles during high water periods. Grazing animals can also be effective in controlling undesirable plants, if grazed at the proper time.
By excluding this tool (grazing), other tools must be used in to manage the property and most of them are more costly. Herbicides to control weeds, and equipment to cut back brush and trees require out-of-pocket expenditures. Still, probably the most important benefit from grazing is the stimulation of the growth of the grasses and forbs by the removal of part of the plants’ stems and leaves.
The key, in all of this, is to not allow the grazing animals unlimited access to the riparian zone, so that they are kept from overgrazing the plants.

This all makes good sense and the article goes on to line out the tools available to make it happen. In comparison, the common regulatory default position of universally excluding the total sum of all excludable activity from all riparian buffer areas appears a convenient stop gap rather than a reasoned construct.

If you walk your property with an eye to understanding how it works, knowing what orange ooze is and what it means is a worthy skill. Orange ooze forms where anaerobic waters seep from the ground. This can be a good and natural thing, as in the image.
Reduced iron (Fe(II)) is a source of energy for life, including iron-oxidizing bacteria. The oxidized iron gives orange ooze its distinctive color. Another distinctive feature of anaerobic waters is a surface sheen, reminiscent in appearance of an oil sheen, but brittle.
Anaerobic waters form for specific reasons.
Unfortunately, one reason is contamination. A classic source of Fe(II) laden waters are acidified drain waters associated with mining and industrial wastes. Other reasons are septic systems, waste water lagoons and land fill leachate. Fuel leaking from a transfer line is a classic source. Any substance that can be rapidly decomposed by microbial activity, even a benign dust control product like lignin sulfonate, can result in anaerobic groundwater if concentrated by runoff in a roadside ditch.
Anaerobic groundwater formation is usually natural. Examples are flows through wetland conditions (as in the image) and through pond bottoms. In natural cases, orange ooze relates to elevated microbial activity. This biological activity usually needs a temperature above 41 degrees F (5 decrees C) and an adequate food supply to support microbial respiration in excess of oxygen supplies.
Now look closely at the image. Notice the greenest vegetation is in the band of water with the anaerobic sheen, parallel, and below the orange ooze. That is because the seep water is warmer than the surface water it is flowing into, stimulating a difference in plant growth. The elevation of the orange ooze shows the anaerobic water is dropping into the stream. Not shown is that it is on only one side of the stream and only along a limited stretch. This gives important clues as to where to look for the source, in this case wetland conditions in the pasture adjoining the stream. The warmth of the seep indicates that the hydrology supporting wetland living conditions is not localized winter precipitation and snow melt, but has deeper, less seasonal, origins.