History
The period of the Agronomic Institute in Marymont (from 1816) and of the Scientific Courses (1906-1918).
During the existence of the Agronomic Institute in Marymont, soil science was taught as part of proper agriculture. The state of soil science knowledge in this period is reflected in the textbooks developed by successive directors of the Institute. The first of them – Jerzy Beniamin Flatt (1778–1858) published in 1825 the book “Ceres or the Agricultural Journal”, the first chapter of which was devoted to soil science and was entitled “About soils and grounds, their properties and ways of knowing them”. In it, he defines soil components, assesses their impact on the shaping of plant growth conditions, and presents an outline of the valuation classification and agricultural usefulness. Jerzy Beniamin Flatt also described land research methods. The second director of the Institute – Michał Oczapowski – was also interested in soil science and presented his soil science views in the textbook “Agronomy or the land science”, published several times from 1819 to 1848.
In the history of the University, soil science initially appeared in the didactic sphere in 1906. It was a separate subject in the Faculty of Agriculture program at the Society for Scientific Courses, transformed in 1911 into Industry-Agricultural Courses. At that time, lectures on soil science were conducted by a professor of the Warsaw University of Technology – Sławomir Miklaszewski (1874–1949), an outstanding specialist in the field of soil cartography and systematics as well as regional soil science. He expressed his great respect for the soil as a farmer’s workshop in 1909 in a widely quoted statement: “Everything binds us to soil. We live on and from it”.
Department of Geology and Soil Science (1918–1939).
As a Division, soil science along with mineralogy, petrography and geology was established at the Faculty of Forestry in 1918 simultaneously with the establishment of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences-SGGW. In 1922 the Division was transferred to the Faculty of Horticulture. It functioned within the structure of this Faculty, independently or periodically in conjunction with Mineralogy, Petrography and Geology until II World War. Until 1932, soil science classes were conducted at the Department of Agricultural Chemistry at 23 Miodowa Street, and then at Rakowiecka Street in the building of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences-SGGW, where the Division received own rooms. In the first years of the existence of the Division, from 1919 to 1922, the head was Dr. Tadeusz Woyno, professor of the Warsaw University of Technology, crystallographer and petrographer. He mainly dealt with the methodology of crystallographic measurements and calculations. In 1923, Józef Sioma (1875–1938) took over the management of the Division and he held it until his death in August 1938. Until the outbreak of II World War the Division was managed by curators. In the interwar period, assistants worked in the Division, some of whom have been associated with the Department for a longer period of time, such as Eugenia Chlipalska (1899–1980) and Czesław Święcicki (1911–1997), later employees of the post-war Department of Soil Science at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences-SGGW, or Hjalmar Uggla – later professor of the Soil Science Department in Olsztyn. Activities focused mainly on didactics, mineralogical and petrographic research, while pedological research was conducted to a limited extent.
The development of soil science in the years 1945–1970.
After World War II, in 1945, the Department of Soil Science resumed activity under the guidance of an outstanding scientist and organizer, Arkadiusz Musierowicz, a professor of the Lviv Polytechnic. The professor had a chemical and agricultural education, and he also completed long-term internships: in Brno with professor Václav Novak, in Göttingen with professor Edwin Blancek and in Zurich with professor Georg Wiegner. This made it easier for him to introduce modern soil science knowledge to Poland.
Thanks to his inspiration, there has been an intensive development of research in many areas of soil science, such as: soil chemistry (sorption properties, forms of phosphorus, fractionation of organic matter, occurrence of microelements), soil physics (study of water-air relations – water sorption curves), soil mineralogy (study of the mineral composition of soils and parent rocks, colloidal fraction and clay minerals), soil cartography (participation in the development of maps of Polish soil – to a map on a scale of 1: 300,000, the employees of the Department mapped almost 6.5 million ha in 5 voivodeships, and professor A. Musierowicz was the editor-in-chief and scientific director of the entire work).
Professor A. Musierowicz pursued a very rational personnel policy. Employed employees (Bohdan Dobrzański, Czesław Święcicki, Eugenia Chlipalska, Franciszek Kuźnicki, Krystyna Konecka-Betley, Zygmunt Brogowski, Zygmunt Olszewski, Marian Kępka, Krystyna Czarnowska, Ewa Leszczyńska, Zbigniew Czerwiński, Ignacy Łakomiec, Stefan Borek) specialized in various fields of soil science, thanks to which complex studies were created. After prof. A. Musierowicz retired in 1964, the Chair’s curators were prof. M. Birecki, and from 1966 professor Bohdan Dobrzański, who from 1969 was appointed head of the Department of Soil Science.
Period after 1970.
From 1970 Soil Science was periodically included in the rank of the Division among the created superior units (institutes, departments) or functioned as an independent Department. The heads of the soil science units of the Division, Department, respectively, in the following years were professors: Bohdan Dobrzański (1969-1979 – Division at the Institute of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, since 1976 at the Institute of Soil Science), Stanisław Kowaliński (1980-1981 – Division at the Institute of Soil Science), Zbigniew Czerwiński (1982-1996 – Department), Alina Kusińska (1997-1999 – Department), Jerzy Pracz (2000-2008 – Division at the Department of Soil Environment Sciences headed by Danuta Czępińska-Kamińska), Dr. Wojciech Kwasowski (2009-2019 – Division at the Department of Soil Environment Sciences headed by Józef Chojnicki), Józef Chojnicki (2020 – Department), and from 2021 Jerzy Jonczak is the head of the Soil Science Department.
In the period after 1970, in addition to the previously continued topics, the dominant scientific issues in the Department were the physicochemical, chemical and mineralogical properties of arable, forest, urban and industrial soils developed in conjunction with other elements of the environment and growing anthropopressure. The properties and structure of humus compounds as well as their role in soil-forming processes and soil fertility were also studied in these soils. A lot of research in the Department was conducted within the framework of governmental, nodal and ministerial problems and research projects obtained in open competitions. Research on the typology and classification of modern and fossil soils was continued. Soils little known so far, such as soils from turf ores, salty, sulphate and sulphide soils, were investigated, the research of soils already described was also deepened, looking for new diagnostic indicators of their genesis and the advancement of the soil formation process. Soil transformations in urbanized and industrial areas (Warsaw, Łódź, Piastów) in green areas, parks and communal forests were investigated. Research was carried out of the soils developed from heaps of various waste types (technosols), concerning the occurrence and development of soil-forming processes in them, the occurrence and transformation of minerals and their impact on the environment. The soil conditions of various forest complexes were identified (Kampinos Forest, Kabacki Forest, Rogów Forest, White Forest, area of Gdańsk Pomerania) and soil maps were prepared for them. In studies of the natural environment a risk assessment was undertaken in terms of potential toxicological risk, the occurrence and mobility of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in various soils and in the environment were examined, also the economic and social criteria for risk assessment were searched. Successively advanced research methods were gradually used: micromorphological, X-ray diffractometry, derivatography, infrared spectroscopy, optical and electron microscopy (scanning – SEM and transmission – TEM) with the use of modern research equipment.