This unique book addresses Iran’s extremely rich soil diversity and resources, which have developed under various climatic conditions ranging from dry to humid conditions. Featuring contributions by a group of respected experts on Iranian soils and agriculture, it provides comprehensive information on the management approaches needed for sustainable soil utilization and conservation under such conditions, and the attendant challenges. As such, it offers a valuable resource for anyone interested in soils and agriculture in Iran, but also in other Middle East and North African countries with similar climatic conditions. The book contains 14 chapters which illustrate the long history of indigenous knowledge and soil research, climate, geology and geomorphology, vegetation cover, soil forming factors and processes, major soils, properties and their classification. Furthermore, it presents past climate change and paleosols, agroecological zones, soil fertility, soil biology and biotechnology, human induced land degradation and “soil management in space and time”. In the end, major challenges facing the soil resources of the country are defined and recommendations are made to face the future challenges.

This book focuses on soil and water conservation at global scale. It is a serious environmental problem that will threaten the socio-economic well-being of the majority of global population in future. The book examines the current situation of land degradation in multiple regions of the world and offers alternative approaches to solve the problems through sharing advanced technologies and lessons learned. It provides comprehensive assessment on characteristics, level and effect of degradation in different regions. It’s a highly informative reference both for researchers and graduate students.

Approximately half of the irrigated area of Iran falls under different types of salt-affected soils and average yield losses may be as high as 50 percent. Slightly and moderately salt-affected soils are mostly found on the piedmonts at the foot of the Elburz (Alborz) Mountains in the northern part of the country. The soils having severe to extreme salinity are predominantly located in the Central Plateau, the Khuzestan and Southern Coastal Plains and the Caspian Coastal Plain. The process of salinization of the surface water resources is mainly due to natural conditions, and to a lesser extent, to the discharge of drainage water into the river systems. Estimates show that about 6.7 km3 of brackish water flow annually through 12 major rivers. There is no straightforward solution to the complex problems of salt-induced soil and water resources degradation in Iran. The approaches addressing the management of these resources need to be multidimensional and must take into account biophysical and environmental conditions of the target areas as well as livelihood aspects of the associated communities.

The author has studied sediment-soil sections in Iran in great detail in order to reconstruct and depict Middle to Upper Quaternary climate change and landscape evolution in this region. Following a comprehensive review of loess occurrences in Iran and adjacent countries, in fact, Western Asia, the study concentrates in detail on the soil sedimentology and pedology of loess reference sections of the Caspian lowlands (Northern Iran) and on loess-like sediments of the Persepolis Basin (Southern Iran). Both sections are characterized by sub-humid to semi-arid climates and present ideal laboratories for studying past climate changes and their effects on sediment deposition and soil formation. The sedimentological/paleopedological analyses presented here include detailed profile descriptions and copious micromorphological, geochemical and mineralogical data. Based on pedostratigraphic correlations and systematic luminescence- and radiocarbon dating, a new chronostratigrapic framework of sediment deposition and soil formation in Iran is described. The framework developed herein is subsequently used to correlate the studied sections with sediment-soil sequences of West and Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The synthesis chapter describes how paleoclimatic conditions affect loess accumulation, soil formation and geomorphodynamics during the formation of sediment-soil sequences, considering the importance of human impact on the geomorphodynamic settings. The book is of interest to pedologists, paleopedologists all researchers interested in loess, soils, climatic controls of their formation in the Quaternary.

The papers assembled here cover topics such as technological advances in soil salinity mapping and monitoring, management and reclamation of salt-affected soils, use of marginal quality water for crop production, salt-tolerance mechanisms in plants, biosaline agriculture and agroforestry, microbiological interventions for marginal soils, opportunities and challenges in using marginal waters, and soil and water management in irrigated agriculture.

The aim of this comprehenvise book is to present the most important results achieved in the research of the clay minerals palygorskite and sepiolite. Palygorskite and sepiolite have found to be useful in a huge variety of industrial and medical applications. As a result, research on these clays has been intensified during the last two decades, and important advances in their characterization have been made. The book contains contributions from distinguished scientists in the field. - Comprehensive treatment of palygorskite and sepiolite - Cutting-edge developments in industrial minerals and applications - Written by distinguished scientists in the field