Perspective: The soil-sphere, save it or lose it

Being first and foremost a plant geneticist specializing in maize, I must admit that when it came to the soil, my most immediate responsibility was to make sure pre-planting amendments were incorporated as recommended. Once those seedlings were up, my focus was almost exclusively on the green plants. But more recently, I taught The Living Soil, a course held at The Woodend Sanctuary and Mansion, owned and operated by the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States. It was while teaching that I came to see soil more distinctly, as a natural resource with its own taxonomy and individual qualities. It brought back days spent studying soil science and revisiting the relationships among the twelve soil orders as pictured in Dr. Nyle Brady’s textbook 1. As I considered the time needed to renew these soils and the paucity of highly arable soils globally, I began to see this resource quite differently.