Explore soil's layers from the nutrient-rich topsoil to the rocky base. Learn about the cycle of life and decay, soil's organic and inorganic materials, and the ways soil supports life on Earth. Additional features include a diagram labeling each of the layers, Fast Facts, a phonetic glossary, an index, an introduction to the author, and further sources for learning.

Young readers will be astounded by the tiny organisms that live in soil, their ecological roles, and how they adapt to living there. Children will learn the value of even the smallest bacteria and be amazed by the impact that soil degradation has on an entire ecosystem.

Soil! We walk on it, play in it, build with it, grow our food in it, and get antibiotics from it. But what exactly is soil? What makes it so important? Can we survive without it? In Explore Soil! With 25 Great Projects, young readers learn how vital soil is to our lives. It filters the water we drink and the air we breathe, and most of the food we eat either grows in soil or subsists on plants that grow there. Soil is a very important part of our daily diet! Activities such as exploring soil runoff, composting, and analyzing soil composition offer kids the chance to get their hands dirty while coming face to face with the study of soil. Kids learn concepts within the fields of life science and chemistry while discovering the dangers soil faces. Explore Soil offers fun, practical information about something kids already love: soil!

Grade-schoolers learn how ants, snails, slugs, beetles, earthworms, spiders, and other subterranean creatures live, breed, interact, move about, defend themselves, and more.

Growing awareness of the importance of soil health means that microbes are on the minds of even the most casual gardeners. After all, anyone who has ever attempted to plant a thriving patch of flowers or vegetables knows that what you grow is only as good as the soil you grow it in. It is possible to create and maintain rich, dark, crumbly soil that’s teeming with life, using very few inputs and a no-till, no-fertilizer approach. Certified permaculture designer and lifelong gardener Diane Miessler presents the science of soil health in an engaging, entertaining voice geared for the backyard grower. She shares the techniques she has used — including cover crops, constant mulching, and a simple-but-supercharged recipe for compost tea — to transform her own landscape from a roadside dump for broken asphalt to a garden that stops traffic, starting from the ground up.

Global agriculture is now at the crossroads. The Green Revolution of the last century is losing momentum. Rates of growth in food production are now declining, with land and water resources becoming scarcer, while world population continues to grow. We need to continue to identify and share the knowledge that will support successful and sustainable

Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, Ohlson has long had an appreciation for the soil. A chance conversation with a local chef led her to the crossroads of science, farming, food, and environmentalism and the discovery of the only significant way to remove carbon dioxide from the air—an ecological approach that tends not only to plants and animals but also to the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil. Ohlson introduces the visionaries—scientists, farmers, ranchers, and landscapers—who are figuring out in the lab and on the ground how to build healthy soil, which solves myriad problems: drought, erosion, air and water pollution, and food quality, as well as climate change. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.