ABSTRACT
This manual stems from many years’ work by BAI on agricultural consultancy and management assignments and reflects the need felt by staff members for a concise, comprehensive – and above all readable – summary of soil-related methods and terminology, with clear guidelines for interpretation of soil and land evaluation data used in project design, costing and management. The manual therefore has two main aims: it is intended firstly to be a practical source-book for soil scientists in the field, and secondly to be a reference work on soil and related studies for members of other disciplines who require information for purposes such as proposal compilation, project planning, survey implementation and practical interpretation of soil and land capability reports. It is not intended as a replacement for the standard soil survey manuals, but rather as an expansion of particular topics of most immediate use for consultancy assignments in the tropics and subtropics. The contents also reflect the working practices of BAI, and are thus fairly strictly confined to those aspects of development studies handled by soil scientists as members of multidisciplinary teams. The manual does not, therefore, cover the wider aspects of multidisciplinary investigations, which are treated in, for example, ILACO (1981), Shaxson et al (1977) and Ministére de la Coopération (1974).
