This group activity charges students with teaching their colleagues about the biogeochemical cycle of one key soil element (e.g., either C, N, S, P, Ca, or Fe). Students are given a single class period to summarize their knowledge and to develop a lesson that includes (1) an organized, 5-8 minute oral presentation, (2) a graphical, conceptual model of their assigned element's soil-biogeochemical cycle, and (3) a list of discussion questions with which to engage their colleagues on the other teams. A second class session is used to refine and to expand upon the submitted models as necessary.

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Students collect soil samples from places of interest around campus and run a series of basic soil analyses to make conclusions about how soil fertility relates to the biological community and human management.

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An Annotated Bibliography

Word Count: 41411

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Word Count: 20163

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K-State Edition, Version 2.0

Short Description:
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.

Long Description:
The Soils Laboratory Manual, K-State Edition is designed for students in undergraduate, introductory soil science courses. The lab 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. The lab manual includes 16 different chapters, each one starting with an introduction and pre-lab assignment, followed by in-lab activities, and complimented by a post-lab assignment. In-lab activities involve field trips, experiments, observation stations, or problem sets. Post-lab assignments include online quizzes, problem sets, or laboratory summary reports.

Version 1 of the lab manual was quickly established as a go-to manual for introductory soil science courses, and was adopted for use by hundreds of soils instructors from around the world. Expanded, updated, and reorganized, Version 2 represents a significant revision to the lab manual, and exhibits a completely new design with improved functionality and accessibility. In addition to a PDF, Version 2 is available in MOBI and EPUB eBook formats and as a web book. A new laboratory, the SoilWeb Field Trip, was added to Version 2 along with significant revisions to the Compost Facility Field Trip and Soil Carbon and Respiration laboratories. The recommended readings in each laboratory now include links to free, online resources in place of conventional textbook reading assignments.

The Soils Laboratory Manual, K-State Edition is used in introductory soil science course at Kansas State University, and is based on the Soils Laboratory Manual, NC State Edition used at North Carolina State University. The Soils Laboratory Manual, K-State Edition was originally published by New Prairie Press in 2017, and was included as a supplement to ‘An Open-Source Laboratory Manual for Introductory Undergraduate Soil Science Courses’ in Natural Sciences Education, Vol. 46:170013, https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/nse/articles/46/1/170013. Supporting materials, assignments, and instructor versions of the lab manual are available at open.soilscience.info. The lab manual is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Digital copies of the Soils Laboratory Manual, K-State Edition Version 2.0 are available for download from New Prairie Press at no cost.

Word Count: 72416

ISBN: 978-1-944548-35-3

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This geotechnical project will introduce you with the concept of using soils as construction materials.This project involves characterizing soils using various laboratory analyses and applying the Unified Soil Classification System in naming the soil.

Keywords: Geotechnical, Mass Wetness, Grain Size Analysis, Atterberg Limits

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Field characterization of soil profiles in coniferous and deciduous settings; sample collection of soils from different horizons; laboratory analysis of soil moisture, soil organic carbon (by loss on ignition), and grain size distribution (by sieving)

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In this video from DragonflyTV, follow the investigation of Isaac and Anjali as they record, measure, and analyze data about how the Sun's position in the sky affects a solar-powered car's speed.

In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members assemble a solar still and make fresh water from saltwater, demonstrating two steps of the water cycle, evaporation and condensation.

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum/Geology of National Parks module. Students use the geometric mean and multiplicative standard deviation to examine the right-skewed distribution of nutrient concentrations in water-quality data at Mammoth Cave National Park.

This site provides fun activities for children to do and make, while they learn about space and Earth science, and the technology that enables science. The Teachers Corner on the WWW site contains curriculum supplements originally published in the ITEA (International Technology Education Association) Technology Transfer Teacher magazine.

This is an assignment I worked on with Dr. Brusseau (University of Arizona) for his Contaminant Transport class. In this problem solving exercise, students are provided data sets that could be obtained by monitoring flow and transport of a tracer or contaminant in the field or in a soil column experiment in the laboratory. They will need to input the equations into a spreadsheet to complete the assignment.

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In this video profile produced for Teachers' Domain, meet conservationist Steve MacLean, an Inupiaq from Barrow, Alaska, who works to preserve the health of the Bering Sea ecosystem.

This activity is a field study where students gather data on a stream based upon their protocol. They will correlate their data with another group and present their results to the class. They will develop and defend in class a new experimental question for a spring study.

A semester-long audio recording project, defined by the needs of a community organization, engages students in not only learning new content but sharing their new knowledge beyond classroom walls (and beyond the professor). This assignment, focusing on "engaged digital scholarship," challenges students to increase their information literacy and use of audio to effectively communicate scientific information for a general audience. This project has been embedded in several different introductory-level Earth science courses for non-science majors, with the resulting podcasts being shared with varied community groups. The example presented here focuses on students in a "Water: Science and Society" course generating podcasts that respond to specific content questions posed by Pennsylvania K-12 teachers, with the resulting podcasts posted on the website for the Pennsylvania Earth Science Teachers Association (PAESTA).

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This activity introduces students to the EPA's Surf Your Watershed website as they investigate a local waterway of their choice. The assignment guides students to analyze data about the waterway's current and historical discharge rates and impairments to water quality.

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This is a survey course in which we will discuss the science behind historical and current environmental issues. We will discuss the major threats to biodiversity and ecosystem function. We will study how human activities have affected the limited resources of our planet. We will learn how air, water and soil degradation have affected human health. Lastly, we will explore the emerging field of sustainability, what it means, and how it is being applied in todayęs world.

The Daily Practice is an ongoing assignment that asks students to make a lifestyle change that contributes to environmental sustainability.

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To understand sustainability, students must understand rates of change. This activity includes a primer on basic rates concepts and an exercise that motivates critical thinking about rates of change and sustainability with an analysis of historical petroleum production rates data from the United States and the world.

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The main objective of this video lesson is to bring the students' attention to the importance of basic and natural sciences in our lives. The lesson will introduce a topic (sustainable energy) that is related mainly to chemistry and is not usually covered directly in a high school curriculum. We hope that this lesson will show students how important and useful the natural and basic sciences are not only for our daily lives, but also for sustainable development. The lesson will present creative and challenging ideas on the topic of alternative energies. It is hoped that students will be inspired by the introduction of these ideas, and that they will develop the confidence to come up with creative ideas themselves. Background for this lesson is based on fundamental concepts in chemistry (mainly), biology, physics and environmental science.