Donald J. Wysocki , Associate Professor, located at Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center, Pendleton, Ph.D., Soil Morphology and Genesis, Iowa State University, 1983. Environmentally efficient soil and water conservation, use of agricultural inputs. Soils, the Environment, and OSU Soils are critical to environmental quality because of their role in the hydrologic and atmospheric cycles. In both urban and rural settings, soils are often inadvertently contaminated with various xenobiotic substances. The fate and transformation of these contaminants are controlled by chemical, biological, and physical processes that occur in soils.
Soils also offer potential to recycle waste products .
Soil Science at Oregon State University is an internationally known program that had a formal beginning in 1918. The program has 16 faculty members with a broad range of expertise in environmental soil science with specialization in chemistry, physics, hydrology, biology, and land and waste management. Additionally, there is extensive course work and research opportunities in related disciplines of microbiology, toxicology, hydrology, environmental chemistry and engineering, and forestry. Corvallis is also home for the USDA Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory, the USDA Forage Seed Production Research Center, a U.S. Forest Service Laboratory, and a major EPA Terrestrial Ecosystems Laboratory. Oregon is an excellent place to study soils, as 10 of 11 soil orders are found in the state.