Roots And Soil Management: Interactions Between Roots And the Soil

The role of root systems in providing plant water and nutrients for terrestrial plants is well known, but only in the last few decades have we come to understand the true depth of the importance that roots and their associated rhizospheres play in the modulation of key soil processes and soil ecology. As the title of the book implies, roots interact and can be said to modulate feedbacks in the soil system that both impact and respond to soil management practices. One of the primary goals of the book is to provide a slightly new context to the study of root systems through the lens of spatial scale. The chapters of the book are arranged into three sections based on micro, meso, and macro scales. While it is well known that a full understanding of soil–plant systems must consider the broad range of mechanisms occurring from microbial to landscape scales, the book provides several examples within each chapter that give new insight into how much, and how little, we know about root-soilmanagement interactions. The different spatial views are useful in helping the reader organize some of the main mechanisms through which roots and their interaction with soil management practices play in defining soil properties and function. This view is justified based on the well defined premise that the complexities of spatial and temporal variability often confound our scientific ability to make meaningful generalizations about root function. On the down side, the insights in the book would be easier to decipher if there were a more in-depth introduction section to focus, summarize, and orient the reader about the most important and basic findings of the research and how they relate to soil management. As such, while there is a plethora of great information in each of the separate chapters, it is more difficult to garner a sense of the broader picture without fully delving into the meat of each chapter. The book as a whole nevertheless deserves the attention of those interested in roots and their interaction with soil management. Each of the chapters is informative and provides a solid description of current and salient root-related research. The work in this treatise will mostly benefit graduate students and faculty who work directly or on the periphery of root-soil interactions, but a few chapters could also be suitable for study in classrooms that utilize problem-based learning.