InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Future of Food > Student Materials > Section 2: Environmental Dynamics and Drivers > Module 5: Soils as a Key Resource for Food Systems
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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These student materials complement the Future of Food Instructor Materials. If you would like your students to have access to the student materials, we suggest you either point them at the Student Version which omits the framing pages with information designed for faculty (and this box). Or you can download these pages in several formats that you can include in your course website or local Learning Managment System. Learn more about using, modifying, and sharing InTeGrate teaching materials.
Initial Publication Date: January 11, 2018

Module 5: Soils as a Key Resource for Food Systems

Overview

Interactions Between Soil Nutrients, Nutrient Cycling, and Food Production Systems

Along with water, sunlight, and earth's atmosphere, the soil is one of the key resources underlying food production by humans. In terms of the coupled human-natural systems we use as a way to understand food systems, we can say that human systems organize landscapes and manage soils, along with agricultural biodiversity and other parts of natural systems, to produce food. Soils exert an influence on this coupled system because they vary in terms of properties such as depth and nutrient content, which alters their response to human management. Soils also have great importance as the site of many nutrient and carbon transformations within the biosphere. They are a storehouse of beneficial soil organic matter that benefits the earth system in many ways. Also, by understanding soils and the earth surface and ecological processes that occur there, human management is able to maintain and improve them, as well as overcome initial limitations or past degradation.

The purpose of this module is to give you as a learner a basic grounding in the nature of soils and soil nutrients. Module 5.1 provides the foundation for understanding soils, soil nutrients and their connection to food. We will also focus on ways that soils are vulnerable to degradation that impairs their role in food production. In module 5.2 we will deepen understanding of how soil management can protect soils in their role of supplying nutrients to crops and protecting other valuable resources such as surface water. To accomplish this we will focus on nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) as key nutrients for food production in module 5.2.


These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »