Education programmes of job
Nature of work
He/she works independently within the powers conferred upon him to study lands, soils characteristics and components, prepare its reclamation programs, follow-up the implementation, prepare appropriate fertilization programs, design irrigation and drainage schemes, oversee the installation and evaluation. He/ she introduces modern technologies for agricultural land development, identifies materials, equipment quantity tables, the specifications, prepares technical reports, manages subordinates and develops their skills. He/ she develops procedures and provides occupational safety and health requirements. The tasks include:- Studying agricultural soil properties and components
- Overseeing plant, soil, irrigation water samples tests.
- Identifying the plants nutrition deficiency symptoms and fertilizer needs.
- Preparing programs of land cultivation and following-up implementation and evaluation.
- Identifying materials and equipment quantity tables.
- Preparing bid stipulations and studying them.
- Preparing technical reports and using modern techniques.
- Evaluating the subordinates performance to identify their training needs and training them to improve their skills.
- Providing and developing occupational safety and healthy requirements.
Environment of work
- Hours of work vary, but he/ she usually have about forty hours a week.
- Work environment diverse between the field work ,which takes the most time, the office and laboratory
- Field work requires physical effort and working in all different weathers (warm and cold)
- Reports are demanded at a specific time to meet deadlines therefore he/ she needs to work for long time.
- Men and women can work in this job, but men are preferred for the field work, and women for official work when they work as a team
Professional life
- Reclamation and land managing engineer always work in an integrated team.The team will work on creating agricultural, industrial, social policy development.
- He /she needs to work depending on climate studies provided by region weather station and relies on soil tests to prevent danger of desertification and land salinity which makes agricultural land out of agricultural investment.
- Training workers on land use methods is needed.
- This job needs to work in accordance with the adopted principles of saline, alkaline and acid land reclamation
- The engineer needs to pay attention to rocky marginal land reclamation.
- He/ she needs to identify the soil degradation causes.
- He/ she needs to assess the damage caused by the drift mechanism by knowing the movement of soil particles that is caused by wind.
- He she needs to have knowledge about the ways to assess soil lost by the wind and the mechanism water erosion
- He/ she needs to work on preventing desertification that is related to water and the wind erosion
Sectors of careers
- Agriculture and Land Reclamation, and EcologyMinistries, and their Departments.
- Deserts and pastures areas
- Rural development centers
- Agriculture Researches Centers.
- Faculty of Agriculture, and Technical Institutes.
- Deserts and Desertification Studies Centers
- Colleges of Agricultural Engineering and Civil and technical institutes
Getting the job
- For getting this job, the person have to study in agriculture faculty, department of essential sciences, or department of rural Engineering, or department of soil and land reclamation.
- The students during that should get some related courses such as: climate and meteorology, irrigation and drainage techniques and Soil types and its classification, plants species sensing techniques and practical study of several agriculture and construction engineering, farm machinery, and rural development courses. In addition to his foreign languages, computer programming, engineering quality knowledge.
- Preferably, agriculture faculty graduate students pursue their graduated program studies in the department of rural Engineering to get their master's and Ph.D. degrees
Skills
- Ability to work on watersheds, soil and its productivity preservation
- Ability to use the different kinds of animal, plant, and manufacturer amendments wisdom.
- Ability to manage and implement saline, alkaline, rocky, and marginal land reclamation
- Ability to figure out the causes of land degradation throughout the study of soil erosion mechanism by wind or water and the influencing factors
- Ability to estimate lost soil by using the mathematical models.
- Ability to determine the way of land protection and maintenance
- Ability to prepare water harvesting programs in the reclamation areas
- Ability to work as a team to pursue land reclamation projects
- Ability to adapt to different working conditions especially in areas that may require staying outdoors for long hours.
- He must have accuracy and exercise caution and common sense when doing any action that might lead to increase desertification or cause soil salinity.
- Ability to forecast and counterintuitive observation to explain any particular phenomenon because any management error may lead to dehydration and land losing.
Sources and references
- Agriculture Faculty Internal Regulation 2007 – Aleppo University.
- Arab Standard Classification of Occupations- Arab Labor Organization-2008.
- National Academic Reference Standard (NARS)- Syrian High Education Ministry- 2012.