New Book at Southwestern College Library

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilzations by David Montgomery

Dirt supports more than the objects that sit atop it. It supports civilizations, as author David Montgomery points out. People obviously rely on dirt for agriculture and therefore sustenance. But history is full of examples of civilizations displaced or destroyed because they depleted their soil. Montgomery, a professor of earth and space sciences, provides a history of people's reliance on soil and warns that current methods of cultivation are exposing fertile dirt to the eroding effects of wind and rain.

The author provides an overview of soil formation before and after life on Earth began. Since that turning point, soil formation has been a complex interplay of water, climate, minerals, vegetation, and soil-dwelling organisms. Today, most of the world's nations are losing soil faster that nature can make it. The answer to reversing that trend lies not in fertilizers and the cheap oil needed to produce them, the author asserts, but in no-till farming and other soil-conservation methods, such as reincorporating organic debris into existing soil.