Part 1 -  Outside Soil Collecting Process

1. Designate the area of soil to be tested (Try to pick different areas of vegetation, for example grassy, herbaceous and bare ground areas.)

2. Make a quadrat using the four flags provided.  Using your tape measure set each flag 6 feet apart from each other

3. Once you have set the quadrat take your data using epicollect

4. Within the quadrat designate 2 spots to collect soil, the spots should be at least 3 feet apart from each other.

5. Using your soil corer, insert and twist until you are able to get far enough to obtain 20 cm of soil inside the soil corer. If the soil corer becomes difficult to use in certain areas, use a hand shovel.

6. Once you have obtained your soil open the plastic sampling bag

7. Carefully insert the soil corer inside the plastic bag and dispose the soil. If the soil is hard to dispose in the bag use a butter knife to scratch the soil off of the corer. Keep collecting soil until you have filled 2/4 of the bag.

8. Close your plastic bag. Label the bag with your field number and the spot number you obtained it from. Once you are done dig back the hole you made with the shovel.

   Repeat step for other locations

   Part 2 - Soil Texture Procedure

   1. Obtain the jars you will be using. Label your jar with your date, field number, test type and initials.

   2. Out of the two bags collected from the area. Choose one bag from each spot you got the soil from. Starting with you first spot pour half of the contents into the labeled glass jar with your groups initials

9. 1. Add ⅛ of Meyer’s Clean Day Dish Soap to the glass jar container containing your soil sample

   2. Now add water up to the lip of the glass jar containing your soi sample

   3. Secure the lid on the glass jar

   4. Set timer for five minutes and shake your jar for the set amount of time.

   5. Allow the jar to sit, undisturbed, for at least 24 hours.

   6. At the end of the 24 hours measure the total depth of your soil with a ruler. You may want to use a flashlight to illuminate the layers

   7. Next measure the thickness of the sand settled (bottom layer)

   8. Now measure the thickness the settled silt (Middle layer)

   9. Subtract the sand and silt depths from the total sample depth to find the depth of of the settled clay.

   ( Total soil - sand layer- silt layer = clay layer)

      12. Calculate the percentage of each layer

   ( Ex. % sand = sand layer/total soil x 100)

      13. Use the soil triangle to find the textural class of your soil.

   Part 3- Soil Chemistry

   Followed procedure from “student procedure” investigation: soil chemistry from peggy notebaert nature museum.