How can the United States meet demands for agricultural production while solving the broader range of environmental problems attributed to farming practices? National policymakers who try to answer this question confront difficult trade-offs. This book offers four specific strategies that can serve as the basis for a national policy to protect soil and water quality while maintaining U.S. agricultural productivity and competitiveness. Timely and comprehensive, the volume has important implications for the Clean Air Act and the 1995 farm bill. Advocating a systems approach, the committee recommends specific farm practices and new approaches to prevention of soil degradation and water pollution for environmental agencies. The volume details methods of evaluating soil management systems and offers a wealth of information on improved management of nitrogen, phosphorus, manure, pesticides, sediments, salt, and trace elements. Landscape analysis of nonpoint source pollution is also detailed. Drawing together research findings, survey results, and case examples, the volume will be of interest to federal, state, and local policymakers; state and local environmental and agricultural officials and other environmental and agricultural specialists; scientists involved in soil and water issues; researchers; and agricultural producers.

Control costs economically. For anyone interested in soil or water conservation -- from an agronomic, rather than an engineering perspective.

This book on the sustainable use of soils and water addressed a variety of issues related to the utopian desire for environmental sustainability and the deviations from this scene observed in the real world. Competing interests for land are frequently a factor in land degradation, especially where the adopted land uses do not conform with the land capability (the natural use of soil). The concerns of researchers about these matters are presented in the articles comprising this Special Issue book. Various approaches were used to assess the (im)balance between economic profit and environmental conservation in various regions, in addition to potential routes to bring landscapes back to a sustainable status being disclosed.

Written from an agronomic rather than an engineering perspective, this introduction to soil and water conservation explores a full range of topics and environmental issues, including some ignored or overlooked in other books on the subject. Comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible, it considers the hazards posed by erosion, sedimentation, and pollution, and describes the techniques needed to conserve soil and maintain environmental quality. Situations and examples are drawn from many places to represent a cross-section of the soils, climates and cultures of the world, as well as the full scope of agricultural, engineering, mining, and other uses of the land. The volume covers conserving soil and water, soil erosion and civilization, geologic erosion and sedimentation, water erosion and sedimentation, wind erosion and deposition, predicting soil loss, soil surveys as a basis for land use planning, cropping systems, tillage practices for conservation, conservation structures, vegetating drastically disturbed areas, pastureland, rangeland, and forestland management, water conservation, soil drainage, irrigation and reclamation, soil pollution, water quality and pollution, economics of soil and water conservation, soil and water conservation agencies in the United States, and soil and water conservation around the world. For professionals that deal with soil and water conservation.

This book addresses questions of relevance to governments and industry in many countries around the world, in particular concerning the link between contaminated-land-management programs and the protection of drinking water resources and the potential effects of climate changes on the availability of these same resources. On the “problem” side, it reports and analyzes methodologies and experiences in monitoring and characterization of drinking water resources (at basin, country and continental scales), pollution prevention, assessment of background quality and of impacts on safety and public health from land and water contamination and impacts of climate change. On the “solution” side, the book presents results from national cleanup programs, recent advances in research into groundwater and soil remediation techniques, treatment technologies, research needs and information sources, land and wastewater management approaches aimed at the protection of drinking water.