Until I arrived at Brookes, I had relatively little exposure to soil science. I did a little at Swansea as an undergraduate, and a small amount came into my Ph.D. work. In Oxford I found myself teaching on <This link's target cannot be found>, and this teaching soon started to affect my research (yes, it does work that way around as well). Just a year after I arrived we started our M.Sc. in Environmental Assessment and Management, a joint venture with the School of Planning. In the first few years I taught on almost all of the units, and I developed the soil science area. What happens to soils when you carry out a development? How can you mitigate the impacts?

HODSON, M.J. (1995) Soils and Geology. In Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment. The Natural and Built Environment Series 2. eds. P.Morris & R.Therivel. UCL Press. 143-160.

The book also turned out to be a great success, going into several reprints. Recently, we completed the second edition. Chris Stapleton is an environmental planner specialising in soils with Bell Cornwell Partnership (he can be contacted at Chris Stapleton). Together with Roy Emberton we carried out a total revision of the original chapter. The second, considerably revised edition, is now out, and can be ordered from the publishers E&FN Spon. Go to their website and click "Find a Book" on the top bar. Then search using "Therivel" in their author catalogue (this is the easiest search I can find, but make sure you then go for the 2001 books!). You should find:

E&FN Spon describe the book as follows "Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment is a practical up-to-date explanation and guide to how EIAs are, and should be, carried out for specific environment components (e.g. air, water, ecological systems, socio-economic systems)." If you have Acrobat Reader loaded you can view the Contents Pages of the whole book. Our chapter is:

HODSON, M.J., STAPLETON, C. & EMBERTON, R. (2001) Soils, Geology and Geomorphology. In "Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment". The Natural and Built Environment Series 2. (eds. P.Morris & R.Therivel). E&FN Spon. (2nd Edition) pp. 170-196.