Watershed Science

This textbook introduces readers to introductory soil science topics including the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils; soil formation, classification, and global distribution; soil health, soils and humanity, and sustainable land management.

Soil and Water Conservation: An Annotated Bibliography highlights freely-available online content related to soil and water conservation. This textbook is designed for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses on soil and water conservation, as well as conservation practitioners.

The Soils Laboratory Manual, K-State Edition is designed for students in undergraduate, introductory soil science courses. The manual highlights the multidisciplinary aspects of soil science with laboratories focused on soil formation, classification, and mapping; soil physics, soil biology; soil chemistry; and soil fertility and management.

This text is concerned with the presentation of this material as a discipline: a logically connected body of ideas that explains an aspect of nature. Specifically, we provide a framework for understanding the status and movement of energy, liquids, gases, and the solutes they might contain through natural porous media. We also lay out some of the most important boundary processes, including evaporation, infiltration, and vapor diffusion. We provide derivations and explanations for each concept and result so that these may form a solid foundation for the understanding of the systems which depend upon earth’s subsurface.

This text covers the following topics: Determination of Moisture Content; Specific Gravity Test; Sieve Analysis; Hydrometer Analysis; Atterberg Limit Test; Compaction Test; In-Situ Density; Permeability Test; Direct Shear Test; Triaxial Test; Unconfined Compressive Strength Test; & Consolidation Test