Videos and Interactives
Soil Ingredients
Interactive
Can you determine the makeup of different types of soil? Try to solve the Soil Ingredients puzzle.
Minerals Make a Difference
Interactive
Can you distinguish between parent rock, rotten rock and soil? Click here see if you are right!
Where in the Soil
World Are You?
Interactive
Play a question and answer game that will test the depth of your soil knowledge.
Underneath It All
Interactive
Dig deep and examine the effects our choices have on soils.
The Big Picture
Interactive
How well do you know the world beneath your feet? Take our Soil Quiz and find out!
State Soil Monoliths
Interactive
Pack your bags! Join us on a tour of the United States soils.
Recipe Book
Interactive
Browse through the recipe book and get ready to whip up some splendid soils.
Color Matching
Interactive
Play the Color Matching game and test your soil smarts.
Hidden Horizons
Interactive
Do you know your soil layers? Piece together the horizons hidden right under our feet.
Soil Orders
Interactive
Closely examine the twelve
soil orders.
Chef's Challenge
Video
Observe how two top chefs compete to create the best soil recipe from the same secret ingredient.
Soil: The Secret Ingredient
Video
Watch the Secret Ingredient video and discover the many ways soils affect our lives.
CSI: Matters of Life and Death
Meet the critters that call soil home and learn about their cycles that create and sustain soils.
What is Soil?
A teaspoon of good farm soil contains up to 1 billion bacteria in more than 4,000 species. © L. Clarke/Corbis
Soil scientists nickname the soil-forming factors CLORPT: Climate, Organisms, Relief, Parent Material, Time.
Chip Off the Old Block
Minerals can indicate the age of the soil and the climate in which it formed. John Kelley/USDA NRCS
Soil Forming Factors
Inceptisol profile. By “reading” soil layers, along with observing moisture content and temperatures, scientists can classify or describe soils.Hari Eswaran/USDA NRCS
Where are you? You’re on a grassland in South America, where cattle graze and wheat grows.Art by Matthew Frey/Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc. © Smithsonian Institution
Where are you? You’re on Siberian permafrost, where the deeper soil horizons are always frozen.Art by Matthew Frey/Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc. © Smithsonian Institution
Where are you? You’re on an island built by volcanoes. This is a volcanic soil in the South Pacific.Art by Matthew Frey/Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc. © Smithsonian Institution
In just one year, the Mississippi River carries 500 million tons of sediment into the Gulf of Mexico. Much of it is agricultural soil.Liam Gumley,
UW–Madison SSEC
Matters of Life and Death
One earthworm, Megascolides australis, can grow to lengths of 8 feet.Ryan McVay/Photodisc/
Getty Images
Costa Rica Rainforest. Soils store the carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere as a gas and make into solid carbohydrates (food).istockphoto.com
Toy truck powered by soil-microbe batteries.© Derek Lovley, Kelly Nevin & Ben Barnhart, University of Massachusetts
Geobacter growing on wire electrodes.© Derek Lovley, Kelly Nevin & Ben Barnhart, University of Massachusetts
Iron-breathing microbes, Geobacter.© Derek Lovley, Kelly Nevin & Ben Barnhart, University of Massachusetts
Pollution-breathing microbes, Dehalobium chlorocoercia.Kevin Sowers, Ph.D., University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute
Antibiotic mold, Penicillium notatum. What new wonder drugs lie hidden in the world of soil microbes?© Dennis Kunkel
Microscopy, Inc.
Biofuel microbe, Clostridium phytofermentans. A microorganism that converts leaves and other plant detritus directly into ethanol.Susan Leschine/University of Massachusetts
Anthrax, Bacillus anthracis. Anthrax was known to harm animals over 2000 years ago, long before humans tried to use it as a biological weapon.© Dennis Kunkel
Microscopy, Inc.
Lichens build soil in some of Earth’s most extreme environments.© Wayne P. Armstrong,
Palomar College (waynesword.palomar.edu)
Underneath It All
The Teton Dam burst, setting off more than 200 landslides in the canyon below, taking 11 lives, and causing millions of dollars of property damage. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
Extremely heavy winter rainfall had soaked the soil and raised groundwater, destabilizing the slopes of Bluebird Canyon. This home was undermined.Pamela Irvine/California Geological Survey
Roadbeds can heave and split open as permafrost melts.Bee Wuethrich
Houses built directly on the soil surface get that sinking feeling.Bee Wuethrich
Iron-stained sidewalks and dead grass, 2003.Courtesy Dr. Delvin S. Fanning
The same scene after soil treatment, 2006.Courtesy Dr. Delvin S. Fanning
Debris flows on Dry Mountain left more than 20,000 cubic yards of sediment on the alluvial fans at the bottom of drainage channels.Lucas Shaw,
Utah Geological Survey
Mudflows gave little warning and traveled quickly. Houses in Santaquin and Spring Valley were damaged.Richard Giraud,
Utah Geological Survey
Wise Choices
Sustainably farmed produce in Africa. Cinzana Agricultural Research Station, Mali.Didier Ruef/Syngenta Foundation
New sensors and instruments can "see" into soils without digging.VERIS TECHNOLOGIES,
Salina, Kansas
Poor soils contribute to extreme poverty in rural villages. People do not have food to eat or sell.Courtesy Earth Institute/ Columbia University
If villagers can grow enough to eat and sell, they can sustain their own farms.Courtesy Earth Institute/ Columbia University
Harvests in three villages have more than doubled.Courtesy Earth Institute/ Columbia University
A World of Soils
The mud brick spiral minaret of the Great Mosque, Samarra, Iraq, a.d. 847–861.Courtesy Alastair Northedge
Sumerian cuneiform tablet, listing herders and cows in the goddess Inana’s fields.Reproduction provided by University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Terra preta soil profile, the fertile “dark earths” of the Amazon Basin.
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