Amber Anderson

Course

AGRON 182: Introduction to Soil Science

Resource

• Introduction to Soil Science 

Case Study

Science textbooks can be expensive, leading to students not to purchase the resource. Short-term rentals may be more budget friendly, but don't allow students to review the basic content when applying it in higher level courses. Amber's open source introductory soil science textbook eliminates those barriers for students, as well as allowing for additional options for interacting with content. Since soils can look very different as one moves from place to place, even across short distances, using many images in this resource allows students to see more examples of what a feature might look like in different locations. Using examples of soils-related problems from this season or last season allow for application of new concepts to relevant problems that they may have already experienced, like an extreme drought or extreme rainfall event, but hadn't explored the soils-related impacts.