This lesson highlights the types of tillage methods commonly employed in Agriculture Studies and draws a correlation between the type of method and the physical properties of the soil.

Soil is one of the earth’s most important natural resources. Healthy soils are essential for healthy plant growth, human nutrition, and water filtration. Healthy soil supports a landscape that is more resilient to the impacts of drought, flood, or fire. Soil helps to regulate the Earth's climate and stores more carbon than all of the world's forests combined.

Every week Science North will provide Grade 3 teachers with a pre-recorded video and printable resource.

Teachers will be able to share these YouTube videos and resources with students every week.

Included are classroom videos, student handouts, and offline lesson plans.

These videos and handouts can be sent to students to provide them with key concepts and activities that link to the curriculum.

Science of Soil modules are fun animations and hands-on interactives to foster learning on key concepts that can hinder understanding of soils topics -- such as logarithms, graph reading, and multidimensional thinking. They were created to fill the gaps in Soil and Environmental Science undergraduates' knowledge of key concepts in the classroom.

What makes a scientist? Curiosity, a passion for learning, a desire to know how the world works! Meet Melissa Arcand, a scientist at the University of Saskatchewan who grew up on Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. Melissa loves science and soil - and she rides a bike all winter in Saskatchewan!
This short video is an interview of Melissa Arcand about her job as a soil scientist. This video fits well when looking at agriculture-related career opportunities.

Students investigate the critical nature of foundations as they learn differences between shallow and deep foundations, including the concepts of bearing pressure and settlement. Using models representing a shallow foundation and a deep pile foundation, they test, see and feel the effects in a cardboard box test bed composed of layers of pebbles, soil and sand. They also make bearing pressure calculations and recommendations for which type of foundations to use in various engineering scenarios.

Over the course of three sessions, students act as agricultural engineers and learn about the sustainable pest control technique known as soil biosolarization in which organic waste is used to help eliminate pests during soil solarization instead of using toxic compounds like pesticides and fumigants. Student teams prepare seed starter pots using a source of microorganisms (soil or compost) and “organic waste” (such as oatmeal, a source of carbon for the microorganisms). They plant seeds (representing weed seeds) in the pots, add water and cover them with plastic wrap. At experiment end, students count the weed seedlings and assess the efficacy of the soil biosolarization technique in inactivating the weed seeds. An experiment-guiding handout and pre/post quizzes are provided.

What elements make up the soil around us? Students will investigate the basics of atomic structure and discover how scientists use a soil sample to determine soil type.

Soil health is the foundation of productive farming practices. Fertile soil provides essential nutrients to plants. Important physical characteristics of soil-like structures and aggregation allow water and air to infiltrate, roots to explore, and biota to thrive.

Students learn about contamination and pollution, specifically in reference to soil in and around rivers. To start, groups use light sensors to take light reflection measurements of different colors of sand (dyed with various amounts of a liquid food dye), generating a set of "soil" calibration data. Then, they use a stream table with a simulated a river that has a scattering of "contaminated wells" represented by locations of unknown amounts of dye. They make visual observations and use light sensors again to take reflection measurements and refer to their earlier calibration data to determine the level of "contamination" (color dye) in each well. Acting as engineers, they determine if their measured data is comparable to visual observations. The small-scale simulated flowing river shows how contamination can spread.

Students learn about one method used in environmental site assessments. They practice soil sampling by creating soil cores, studying soil profiles and characterizing soil profiles in borehole logs. They use their analysis to make predictions about what is going on in the soil and what it might mean to an engineer developing the area.

We all know that rain can pick up soil and move it off the field. The area drained, the texture, moisture level and condition of the soil, and the roll of the land, all influence the degree and type of erosion a farmer has to deal with. Stick around to learn how to control soil erosion by water on your farm.

Students learn the basics about soil, including its formation, characteristics and importance. They are also introduced to soil profiles and how engineers conduct site investigations to learn about soil quality for development, contamination transport, and assessing the general environmental health of an area.

This resource offers a more intermediate level dive into soil science. It includes topics like soil organisms, nutrient cycles, and responsible use of fertilizers.

In the first lesson of this project, students identified tillage systems and their effects on soil. This second lesson in the sequence identifies the role of cation exchange in soil fertility and examine the relationship between soil structure and cation exchange capacity.

In this second lesson students will be introduced to different ways irrigation can be affected by environmental factors such as heat and soil types. This is a lab experiment that will require some prior planning and set up.

A video about Spatial Variability of Soils by Dan Pennock, Department of Soil Science, University of Saskatchewan 2016. The Distance Education Unit.

Students learn about contact stress and its applications in engineering. They are introduced to the concept of heavy loads, such as buildings, elephants, people and traffic, and learn how those heavy loads apply contact stress. Through the analysis of their own footprints, students determine their contact stress.