Lessons in Hawaiian Soils: Pedagogical Tools in Soil Science
Date
2025-05
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Abstract
Soils are the foundation of life, playing a crucial role in supporting ecosystems and human civilization. However, soil degradation and soil loss pose significant threats to food security, water quality, and climate stability. Educating future generations about the importance of soil conservation and management is crucial for sustainable land use practices and environmental stewardship. Soil monoliths are preserved vertical sections of soil that show fundamental concepts in soil science such as soil color, structure, profile, and soil forming processes and factors. This project develops methods to create a tropical soil monolith and evaluates the created monolith as a teaching tool for 3rd and 4th year undergraduate soil science students. Field and laboratory methods were adapted to accommodate the challenges of incoherent tropical soils, including slope stabilization, use of support boards, fabric reinforcement, and preservation using adhesives and drying treatments. These methods were refined through trial and error and are documented to support future efforts in tropical environments. The teaching module showed that both the monolith and soil pans significantly increased student knowledge, though no significant difference was observed between the tools in terms of knowledge gains. I observed the content of student discussions during the teaching module varied based on the teaching tool, where students who used the soil pans tended to discuss color and texture, while students who had the monolith discussed soil structure and depth. Primary outputs of this study include a revised methodology for extraction and preservation of incoherent soil monoliths, an effective pedagogical tool (the Andisol monolith), and teaching module for undergraduate professors to use for explaining soil texture, color, and structure. The methods fill a discrete gap available on monolith creation for tropical soils, which often are incoherent. The created curriculum is publicly available on QUBES, allowing teachers to use and adapt it for their own lesson plans. The study reinforces the advantage of using interactive teaching methods within the classroom. An area of interest for further research would be performing a technical review and refinement of the methodology needed to collect further monoliths from the various unconsolidated soils of Hawai'i including Oxisols and Ultisols.
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Soil science, Soil profile, Andisols, Soil science--Methodology, Soils--Sampling--Technique, Soils--Study and teaching (Higher), College teaching--Aids and devices
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63 Pages
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Hawaii
Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, Honolulu (Hawaii)
Harold L. Lyon Arboretum, Honolulu (Hawaii)
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CC BY-NC 4.0
Rights Holder
Barron, Lydia
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