Soil: Sustaining Life on Planet Earth

On July 18, 2008, the U.S. National Committee for Soil Science sponsored a symposium entitled "Soil: Sustaining Life on Planet Earth", held in conjunction with the opening of the soils exhibit (“Dig It! The Secrets of Soil”) at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. The symposium was co-sponsored by the Soil Science Society of America and the International Union of Soil Science. The symposium also represented an activity celebrating the United Nations-designated International Year of the Planet Earth.		Symposium speakers Rattan Lal, Diana Wall, Daniel Richter, and David Montgomery with USNC chair Paul Bertsch (center).
The symposium included talks on the role of soil in the rise and fall of civilizations, anthropogenic influences on the global soil resource, the importance of soils for ecosystem function and critical ecosystem services (in both natural and agro-ecosystems) and in sustaining life on Earth.
	David Montgomery (left), University of Washington, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations Daniel Richter (right), Duke University, Humanity’s transformation of Earth’s soil
	Diana Wall (left), Colorado State University, The hidden world beneath our feet: What it does for us Rattan Lal (right), The Ohio State University, Sustaining soil quality on a warming planet

Click on the image above to see the symposium flyer (PDF, 1.9 MB) for speaker bios and more information.