Part 1. Soil Definition. 1. Soil as a system: A history / Richard Huggett -- Part 2. Soil History. 2. Soils, chemical weathering, and climate change in Earth history / Steven G. Driese, Lee C. Nordt, and Gary E. Stinchcomb -- Part 3. Soil Formation Processes. 3. Soils, vegetation growth and water balance: A theory for Budyko / Allen Hunt -- 4. Earthworms, plants, and soils / Renée-Claire Le Bayon, Géraldine Bullinger, Andreas Schomburg, Pascal Turberg, Philip Brunner, Rodolphe Schlaepfer, and Claire Guenat -- 5. Tephra for the trees: Geochemical constraints on weathering and tephra inputs to soils / Claire E. Lukens and Kevin P. Norton -- 6. The origin and formation of clay minerals in Alpine soils / Markus Egli and Aldo Mirabella -- Part 4. Application of chemical weathering/soil formation in other disciplines. 7. Weathering Rinds as Tools for Constraining Reaction Kinetics and Duration of Weathering at the Clast-scale / Peter B. Sak -- 8. Unraveling loess records of climate change from the Chinese loess plateau using process based models / Peter A. Finke, K. N. Arachchige Ranathunga, Ann Verdoot, Yanyan Yu, and Qiuzhen Qin -- 9. Relations between soil development and landslides / Arnaud J.A.M. Temme -- 10. Soils in agricultural engineering / Rainer F. Horn and Rattan Lal -- Part 5. Integrated studies of soils. 11. Chemical weathering in the McMurdo dry valleys, Antarctica / W. Berry Lyons, Deborah L. Leslie, and Michael N. Gooseff -- 12. Carbon and nutrient fluxes within southeastern Piedmont critical zones / Todd C. Rasmussen, Maryam Foroughi, and Daniel Markewitz -- 13. Is this steady-state? Weathering and critical zone architecture in Gordon Gulch, Colorado Front Range / Suzanne P. Anderson, Patrick J. Kelly, Noah Hoffman, Katherine Barnhart, Kevin Befus, and William Ouimet -- 14. Summary, challenges, and ways forward / Allen Hunt, Markus Egli, and Boris Faybishenko.