The Soil Science Society of America annual meeting is a homecoming for all soil scientists and the 2019 meeting was a special one. To live up to the theme ‘Soils across Latitudes’ the Soil Science Society of America teamed up with the Canadian Society of Soil Science and the Mexican Society of Soil Science for the San Diego meeting.

There were many social and scientific highlights. Dan Richter presented the Lyle lecture on ‘How Deep is Soil’  and I convened a symposium on ‘The Role of Soil in the Critical Zone’ to bring together a range of talks at different scales about how soil is central to the Critical Zone. The invited talks included Dr. Rebecca Lybrand from Oregon State University, Dr. Nicole West from Central Michigan State, Dr. Jennifer Druhan from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champlain, and Dr. Jane Willenbring from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It was a fantastic session bringing very different perspectives on what soils are and how they relate to the Critical Zone.

The second day of the symposium brought even greater diversity of talks, ranging from Colorado watersheds to mountains of Vermont. Corey Palmer presented some of her findings about Gallium in the Critical Zone and I presented on Vanadium in the Critical Zone. The Vanadium work was recently published in the Frontiers of Earth Science but the Gallium remains a work in progress! Lara Munro presented her masters research in the ‘Metal Contaminant Dynamics in Soils’ session.

Socially, the Soil Science Society of America is a homecoming of sorts. It is an opportunity to rub shoulders with the giants of soils! However, it serves as a fantastic time to meet your peers, both those that are coming up and those that are at or just ahead of you on the academic ladder. Shout out all of the Duke, North Carolina State, U of Georgia, UC Riverside, Oregon State, Penn State, and Cornellians I got to see. I am excited for the next Soil Science Society only meeting!