Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
“Never! Do you really wish to follow my footsteps working every day from sunrise
to long after it's dark without ever having time or making enough money to take a
decent vacation? I strongly advise you to study accounting, economics, or some
topic to make money. Do not study agriculture and become a farmer like me.”
Two months later and convinced that I should strive to become a wealthy accoun-
tant or business manager, I entered college. During the fi rst term I took these courses:
accounting, economics, business mathematics, sociology, and history. By the mid-
dle of the term, I knew that I made a mistake even though I made excellent fi nal
grades in all fi ve courses. By the following term, switching gears from money to
science, I took botany, chemistry, entomology, geography, and geology. And 3 years
later at a different university, I graduated with a BS degree in Agricultural Chemistry
and Soils. But with that knowledge and experience gained in classrooms and labo-
ratories and across various landscapes, the exact meaning, behavior, and importance
of dust remained somewhat of a mystery to me in relation to the plant and animal
life that I had observed in the desert as a youngster. Being curious, I continued my
science-related education by exploring the impact of dust and soil particles on
microbial communities living within desert topsoils. My exploration was enhanced
by using newly available radioactive elements to determine critical levels of carbon,
nitrogen, and phosphorus being manipulated by millions of soil microorganisms
living in the vicinity of each and every root of a plant. Their dominance controlled
the fate of each plant - its metabolism, growth, survival, and reproduction - as well
as communities of plant species that thrived or were exterminated on each soil
across the desert. Earning an MS degree in soil microbiology was exciting - it
opened my eyes and improved my understanding of what I could not see as a teen-
ager without a powerful microscope.
My curiosity continued regarding my early observations of various kinds of ani-
mal communities thriving in dust-laden arid regions without any obvious sources of
readily available water. With the bulk of each of their individual bodies being com-
posed of water that tends to evaporate daily, where did they fi nd water in desert
regions with rain limited to 1 cm per month? Such rainfall seldom provided enough
water to accumulate in creek beds that remained dry throughout the year. Not under-
standing how water infi ltrated into and migrated through desert soils nor how com-
munities of micro- and macro-sized animals meandered through and between local
hydrological regions of arid to humid environments, I switched my attention to the
impact of soils and water on the diversity of animal life by studying soil physics - a
combination of soil hydrology, mathematics, and physics conceptually integrated
with the sun's energy at the soil surface. Four years later, I earned the PhD in soil
physics after analyzing infi ltration and redistribution of water within fi ve different
fi eld soils using the fi rst homemade portable neutron soil water content measuring
device; I continued my childhood habit of walking across the landscape and collect-
ing historical artifacts from the soil. At that time, being nearly 30, married and a
father, I was well on my way to fulfi ll the fi ctitious quote of Antonio Usurero.
Having lived in only two regions, the desert fl oor of Arizona and the corn belt of
the USA, during the next 20 years I learned more about life on Earth by walking
across and digging holes in soils developed under different climates on all continents
