As the human population grows from seven billion toward an inevitable nine or 10 billion, the demands on the limited supply of soils will grow and intensify. Soils are essential for the sustenance of almost all plants and animals, including humans, but soils are virtually infinitely variable. Clays are the most reactive and interactive inorganic compounds in soils. Clays in soils often differ from pure clay minerals of geological origin. They provide a template for most of the reactive organic matter in soils. They directly affect plant nutrients, soil temperature and pH, aggregate sizes and strength, porosity and water-holding capacities. This book aims to help improve predictions of important properties of soils through a modern understanding of their highly reactive clay minerals as they are formed and occur in soils worldwide. It examines how clays occur in soils and the role of soil clays in disparate applications including plant nutrition, soil structure, and water-holding capacity, soil quality, soil shrinkage and swelling, carbon sequestration, pollution control and remediation, medicine, forensic investigation, and deciphering human and environmental histories. Features: Provides information on the conditions that lead to the formation of clay minerals in soils Distinguishes soil clays and types of clay minerals Describes clay mineral structures and their origins Describes occurrences and associations of clays in soil Details roles of clays in applications of soils Heavily illustrated with photos, diagrams, and electron micrographs Includes user-friendly description of a new method of identification To know soil clays is to enable their use toward achieving improvements in the management of soils for enhancing their performance in one or more of their three main functions of enabling plant growth, regulating water flow to plants, and buffering environmental changes. This book provides an easily-read and extensively-illustrated description of the nature, formation, identification, occurrence and associations, measurement, reactivities, and applications of clays in soils.

Get down to the individual microbe, enzyme, and ion & learn to partner with your soil micro to macro for incredible plants, yields, nutrition, and increasingly better soil every year! This is the book for you if you are looking for clear recipes, visual science, the chemistry, the biology, and the bridges connecting them all. If you have ever wondered what is really going on in the soil and are searching for solutions, this is the book for you.

This report contains 27 papers that serve as a testament to the state-of-the-art of civil engineering at the outset of the 21st century, as well as to commemorate the ASCE's Sesquicentennial. Written by the leading practitioners, educators, and researchers of civil engineering, each of these peer-reviewed papers explores a particular aspect of civil engineering knowledge and practice. Each paper explores the development of a particular civil engineering specialty, including milestones and future barriers, constraints, and opportunities. The papers celebrate the history, heritage, and accomplishments of the profession in all facets of practice, including construction facilities, special structures, engineering mechanics, surveying and mapping, irrigation and water quality, forensics, computing, materials, geotechnical engineering, hydraulic engineering, and transportation engineering. While each paper is unique, collectively they provide a snapshot of the profession while offering thoughtful predictions of likely developments in the years to come. Together the papers illuminate the mounting complexity facing civil engineering stemming from rapid growth in scientific knowledge, technological development, and human populations, especially in the last 50 years. An overarching theme is the need for systems-level approaches and consideration from undergraduate education through advanced engineering materials, processes, technologies, and design methods and tools. These papers speak to the need for civil engineers of all specialties to recognize and embrace the growing interconnectedness of the global infrastructure, economy, society, and the need to work for more sustainable, life-cycle-oriented solutions. While embracing the past and the present, the papers collected here clearly have an eye on the future needs of ASCE and the civil engineering profession.