Soils and Geomorphology

Each chapter goes above and beyond any undergraduate lesson plan, which makes it a great book for undergrad professors to use because it gives curious students an option to quench their thirst for the heavily-quantitative side of the lesson that the professor skips over. The trouble arises when you're tasked with skimming through the chapters for the basics and you get sidetracked, and maybe discouraged, by the material's underlying complexity, but on the bright side the wording is by no means ambiguous. Out of all the Soils textbooks that my school has in the GS department, I firmly believe this is the most comprehensive.

The process is pedogenesis and this book will tell you what you want to know. I'm using this book in a class I am taking and I would recommend it to anyone who is seriously thinking about wanting to understand soils in a more geomorphologic and geologic perspective. Not a light read, but definitely not a traditional textbook either. The extensive references section will also help to lead you in other directions you may wish to take in order to find more on specific studies and research papers.

Good!

I'm using this for my grad research in geology. It's a great text for someone who has some general geologic background, but who wants to know more about soils. It focuses on general soil chemistry and soil forming factors, among other topics. Birkeland is a great writer, he explains things really clearly.