Soil and Soil Survey

A and how the response of management affects them are considered. The information collected in a soil survey helps in the development of land-use plans and evaluates and predicts the effects of land use on the environment. Soil surveys were first authorized in the United States in 1896. Although extensive writings on husbandry by L.J.M. Columella were published in the first century A.D., practical experience was the teacher of most farmers until the advent of agricultural chemistry in the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century the knowledge about soils that had been gained from farming, agricultural chemistry, biology, and geology grew into a unified concept of the soil itself.