Answer: Soil

There’s a world of information beneath our feet, locked away in the soil we walk on everyday, and pedologists spend their careers studying soil to help us understand what happened in the past to that soil and what can happen in the future based on what we do to, and with it.

Pedology deals with analysis and classification of soil in its natural environment. Although at first glance it would seem like a simple or limited area of study, a successful soil study must take into account a wide variety of factors like atmospheric activity, geological trends in the region, the biology of local species, current and past climate trends, and a wide variety of other natural sciences.