Defining A New Engineering Course And Emphasis Area For The 21st Century Natural Resources Engineering

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the transition of the soil and water conservation agricultural engineer to the natural resource engineer considering questions of changing society, current student demographics, institutional priorities, current instructors and field of knowledge. Natural resources engineering is defined as the design of planned activities complimentary to or opposing natural or societal forces leading to modifications of the soil, water, biota and/or air environment. The problem space is on the farm, field or small watershed scale as opposed to the regional or large watershed scale. The purpose is resource development and/or environmental management. Thus, we in effect broaden the definition of natural resources from the usual oil/gas mining extraction activity to the more general crop production and urban development activities. Ancillary site development activities associated with bioremediation, bioconversion and resource extraction are included by the more general definition. Natural resources engineers solve problems arising from nonagricultural rural population, concentration of animal production, outward advances of the “urban fringe,” and waste/residue recycling to productive land. Natural resources engineers also address traditional agricultural production problems. Pressure for improving stream water quality to meet total mass daily loadings (TMDLs) continues. The engineers meeting these demands in the future are increasingly likely to be from a non-farm background. The natural resources engineer will address field scale problems. The civil engineer will address regional scale issues. There will be numerous opportunities for natural resource and civil engineers. The current institutional priorities, incoming students, society and support the transition from the traditional soil and water agricultural engineering to natural resource engineering, as does the expanding field of knowledge. Attention must be devoted to hiring appropriately trained instructors to actualize the transition.