Conclusion- Michael Savio

        I think both Kristen and I had our ups and downs in this lab, but overall it was an interesting and insightful experience. Needless to say I now know a lot more about soil than I had in the past (who would've guessed that dirt is different than soil?) and am glad to learn more about what I'm stepping on everyday. I for one never really thought about the fact that there are millions of microorganisms that live and function in the soil, hence making soil in fact alive. I also learned just what makes soil fertile and able to grow crops through all the labs and then in the remediation and controlled experiment labs. The labs helped me understand the fundamentals of soil and its various components.
        People should be more aware of the dangers of soil overuse in agriculture. We use so much soil in agriculture nowadays and use the soil more than we're able to replenish it, and if we don't slow down our production and use it sustainably, we could end up not being able to feed large portions of the world. Although I was absent for most of the salinization lab, I know that the amount of salt we put into the soil can cause many problems for the soil and can cause it to lose its fertility. Like many of our natural resources, soil is a part of the environment we take for granted, and we are in serious jeopardy of losing it in the near future if we don't change our agricultural practices.
        The lab was sometimes tiresome work, but I think it allowed us to learn about soil in an intriguing and effective way. And although sometimes I may still call it dirt, I'll know deep down that it is and always will be soil.
        Also, I am responsible for the remediation, berlese funnel, soil fertility analysis, and soil porosity posts while Kristen is responsible for all the others.

Kristen's Conclusion

This lab focused on the composition of soil and tests that one can do to learn more about what is in the soil. Many things can influence how well things grow in soil like whether it is clay or sandy which influences water drainage. During this lab I have become more aware of how much thought goes into different aspects of soil. Before this I did not know that things like pH in soil mattered to the health of the soil and organisms growing in it. I knew that soil had living organisms but I did not know how influential these were in the development of the soil and how all the different layers were made.The most important part of the lab I think was learning how to test for different chemicals because it’s important to know how much is already in your soil. As we learned earlier a lot of the chemicals in soil like nitrogen and phosphorus are important in keeping the environment healthy, and we need to use these sustainably. By knowing how much the soil has you can tell how much is needed so that there isn't an excess amount being used. I think it is important for people to know this along with the benefits of using different fertilizers because paying attention to what’s being put in your soil is something easy to do unlike some things like the porosity which are more time consuming to figure out. Although organic is seen as better it also has down sides because there's no way to know exactly what is being put in the soil. 

Salinization

In the salinization test we were assigned to create a bag of 4g/100mL concentration of salt for each lab table. Since we had to use 120mL of water we used the equation 4g/100mL=Xg/120mL to figure out the amount of salt we would need to keep the proportion the same. This came out to be 4.8g of salt so we mixed this in with 120mL of water. Then we put one paper towel with beans on top and poured 20mL of water into each of the 6 bags. In order to also compare red vs white beans we were to split up 3 bags of white and 3 bags of red beans. With our own bags we observed that the only growth was seen in the 0g of salt concentration bag. However, in other groups the .5g beans were also growing just as well and one group even had the start of a root breaking through in a 2g bag. 

.5g concentration

Overall, the higher concentrations were incapable of growing and most were even molding and had a green color to them. The same patterns in growth seen in the red beans were seen in the white beans.

This led us to the conclusion that things can not grow if there is too much salt. In order to remediate salty soils you can add sulfur, add carbon to reduce soil dispersion and the amount of sodium. Also tilling and leaching the soil can help.

white beans with .5g concentration

Controlled Experiment

remediated (left) control (right)

Despite our efforts, in our experiment our controlled soil grew better than our remediated soil. It was close because both were growing but the lettuce in the controlled cup was taller and was beginning to grow faster. The lettuce in our remediated soil was limp and beginning to fall over whereas the lettuce in our controlled soil was much more straight up. We predict this is because in our efforts to help our remediated soil flourish we smothered it with too many chemicals. However neither of our soils produced very good lettuce as both only had three of the seeds grow and each only had two leaves at the top. The leaves of both were a light green and the stems were an off white with a tint of a greenish hue. They grew at about the same slightly below average rate but towards the last couple of days the controlled soil was distinctly becoming taller. Lettuce tasting different could be because of many factors. The location that the soil was from could have an impact because different organisms and factors influenced the development of the soil and the composition. We knew going in that we had soil that was at a disadvantage and had little life or beneficial characteristics due to where we had collected it from. Our lettuce probably would taste very toxic because we had to add chemicals in lrder to even the playing groun with the other soils. the taste Of remediated soil it could have changed based on different chemicals added. Depending on how much fertilizer was put in or if the fertilizer was organic or inorganic could effect the taste.

control (left) remediated (right) on the last day

Remediation

      Our soil was not exactly as fertile as we would have hoped. Through the results of our tests, we found that our soil was low on nutrients, organic matter, and life, which isn't extremely spectacular for growing crops, but it is also at a good neutral pH and a silt-loam complexion, which are more beneficial traits. So our focus for creating the best possible soil for our lettuce centered around adding more nutrients to the soil to support the plant's growth.

The two variables (before adding fertilizer)

       But first, we needed to decide exactly what traits we wanted to enhance in our soil. Looking at the tests we'd done on our soil, we found that because of the data from our berlese funnel test (there were no living organisms in our soil) we definitely needed to do something to create the best possible conditions for our plant to grow. We looked at the results from the soil texture tests and the percolation rate tests and found that the soil most likely has mostly a silt or silt-loam texture because the data from the qualitative and quantitative tests pinpoint a silt-like complexion and the data from the percolation rate test shows us that our soil was more similar to clay than sand but was not extremely close to that of clay. Our soil having a more silt-like texture was favorable in our opinion because we did not want the soil to be too sand-like or clay-like to detract from the growth rate of the lettuce, so we decided not to alter the soil texture. We also looked at the results from the percent organic matter test and correlated it with the soil fertility analysis to find that the low organic matter may be a factor of how low the soil's nutrients are. Organic matter contributes to the foundation of the soil's nutrients because without organic matter, the soil cannot take in as many nutrients and becomes less fertile.
      Taking these results into consideration, we decided that it would be best to use inorganic fertilizer to give our lettuce the best chance of not being terrible. That doesn't sound super positive. I meant to say, to give our lettuce the best possible chance of being the best gosh-darn lettuce the world has ever seen! That's slightly better, maybe a little overdone, but let's keep this optimistic.

Stop! Hammer time

      Anyway, because our lettuce has such low nutrient levels, we decided to use the inorganic fertilizer because we felt that it would be better to use specific known amounts of nutrients that would be added into the soil instead of organic fertilizer in which we'd have no idea the exact amounts of what we were adding to our soil. We didn't need to add anything to alter the pH because we thought a pH of 7 would be sufficient, we didn't add anything to the soil texture because we thought soil with mostly silt would be good for growing this type of seed, and we didn't add any more organic matter because we thought that adding more nutrients would be more helpful than adding more organic matter.

The two variables (after adding fertilizer)

      In our remediated soil, we added Vigoro fertilizer to add the essential nutrients we needed. The control soil weighed 262.7 grams and the remediated soil weighed 260.4 grams to begin the lab, and we appropriately added 12.8 grams of Vigoro into the water we used to water the remediated soil. We used 20 mL of water each day (except on days we were off school) to water the two plants, and we left the plants in natural sunlight each day.
       We expect that the lettuce made in the remediated soil will be healthier and tastier than that of the controlled soil because of the nutrients added. Let's hope the remediated soil lettuce will be less terrible than the other. I'm sorry, I mean both of them will be fantastic, but maybe the lettuce with the enhanced soil will be even better!

Berlese Funnel

Our beautiful bottle of soil

      Our Berlese Funnel test was set up correctly and carried out in accordance with the correct procedure; however, we found no organisms. In the ethanol from the petri dish there was nothing living that could be seen by the naked eye. Each day, the bottom of the soda bottle had a little more soil that had fallen through the funnel, but not enough that it would throw off the results of the experiment, so I think our soil sample just didn't have any macroinvertebrates.

Looking good under the lamp

     
      When we were collecting the soil, we found some insects and worms that were in the soil, but somehow (as in through human error) we had none of these organisms in our soil sample. In particular, we saw earthworms in our soil when we collected it, and these organisms' function is to recycle nutrients and carbon in soil. We didn't see any other distinct organisms that were in the soil, but the worms do play an important role in the formation of soil.

No organisms :(

      After discussing the lab with other groups in the class, many had similar results as us in the fact that they had either very few organisms or none at all. This could be a result of many different scenarios, but perhaps it could be because of the fact that each group's collected soil was unfertilized and may have had less nutrients than nutrient-heavy soil that would attract and contain more macroinvertebrates. This overwhelming lack of organisms creates a pattern throughout the class of low levels of macroinvertebrates in the soil.


     

Soil Fertility Analysis

Savio shaking his groove thang

     The fertility analysis revealed information about how well our soil will be able to grow plants. The soil responded to the tests in various ways and helped us understand the positive and negative traits of our collected soil.

Phosphorous test

      We started with the phosphorous test, which showed us that there were only trace amounts of phosphorous in our soil. In our nitrogen and potassium tests, the results were not very encouraging either: the nitrogen test results showed us we had trace amounts of nitrogen in our soil, and because the potassium test took so many droplets of the solution to turn the other solution a light blue color, it was revealed that we had low levels of potassium in our soil (0-120 lbs/acre). All the nutrients we tested for in the soil were at low or very low levels, which does not bode well for producing crops in this soil. Because the soil was unfertilized, we now understand why so many farmers use fertilizers on their crops because if they had soil like ours then it would be much more difficult to grow productive crops with soil with low nutrient levels.

pH test

Potassium test

Cuba Marsh

     Our pH test had a more positive result. Through the test, we found that our soil's pH level was very close to precisely 7, meaning that the soil was very neutral, neither too acidic nor too basic. In the area of Cuba Marsh in which we collected our soil, there were mostly grasses and some trees, but not an incredibly abundant amount of plant life. The plants did not necessarily look healthy around us, but the season was turning towards winter when we collected the soil so it may have been that the plants were changing in accordance with the seasonal change. However, most plants need a soil pH of between 5.5 and 7.0 to truly thrive, so I think the pH level of our soil is good, and most plants that can survive in this climate could live in this soil based solely on its pH level (in terms of nutrients and formation perhaps not so much). The grasses and trees around the area in which we collected our soil were surviving and were successful based on the soil pH but may have looked not as healthy due to seasonal change or the low nutrient levels in the soil.

Soil Porosity

   

     We found our pore space to be 92mL because we had to pour 92mL of water onto the soil for the water to break the surface of the soil. To calculate the soil porosity, we needed to find the percent of the volume of dry soil that could be filled by water. In other words, soil porosity is the percent of the amount of open space in a given volume of soil compared to the total volume of soil.

92mL of water / 200 mL of soil = .46 x 100 = 46% porosity

Pour it up, pour it up

     The data showed us that there is in fact a lot of empty space between the solid matter that makes up soil in a given amount of soil. Almost half of the volume of our soil was composed of empty space that the water was able to fill. This also allows us to understand how harmful polluted runoff water can be to soil; if the polluted water is able to take up almost half the space of a given amount of soil, the water can do serious damage to the soil and the microorganisms within it.

Soil Dry Percolation Rate

Setting up the test

To measure how fast water runs through dry soil we set up three water bottles with the neck cut off and placed upside down in the remaining bottle to act as a funnel. We set up three so that one would be used for our soil, one for sand, and one for clay. The cross sectional area of our bottle was about 9 pie centimeters. The numbers would make sense because clay is able to absorb water more and slow down the rate at which water runs through it, whereas with sand the particles are larger to where the water falls through it more easily. Our numbers demonstrate this because in the clay the water filtered through at a much slow pace of 0.06 mL/second and even then only 16 mL of the water was able to filter through the clay because the rest appeared to be absorbed. The sand had different results with 20 mL filtering through at a rate of 0.21 mL/second. The sand had a faster rate and less water was absorbed which further supported that clay absorbs more. As seen below, the percolation rate of our soil at 0.19 was closer to the sand than the clay. This would suggest that our soil was more similar to sand, although our past tests somewhat contradict this belief.

            Time Took        Amount Drained

Sand     94.8 s                20 mL

Clay      269.4 s              16 mL

Soil       127 s                 24 mL

after

after (from left to right-soil,sand,clay)

Percent Organic Matter

ooops

The soil started at 28.1 grams after being heated in the oven over night. We then placed the soil on the Bunsen burner, but failed to put it in a crucible resulting in some possible errors in our results. When we checked on our soil it had turned to a reddish brown color in some places. Then the foil started to burn through so some of our soil fell through which could affect the resulting mass. After the Bunsen burner the soil weighed 25.6 grams, suggesting that 2.5 grams was lost as organic matter. This number could have been higher than it should be since some of our fallen soil could account for the difference in weight. With the numbers we got 2.5 grams of the original total of 31.7 grams would mean that about 7.8% organic matter was in our soil. It wouldn't be necessary to measure the mass alone because we are strictly looking at the difference in weight for this portion of the test. If the crucible was included in the first weight and then again in the second weight it would not effect the difference, or the grams that were lost as organic matter. We eventually would need a weight of only the soil, but since we already measured it for the soil moisture we can just use that as our original soil weight in order to calculate the percent of organic matter in our soil. One reason it is important to have organic matter is because they supply the soil with nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. The organic matter also can absorb water which can be released to plants, helping them grow. It also helps prevent erosion because of water infiltration and the soil aggregation, which improves the soils ability to take up and store water.

Soil Texture Test

Qualitative Test:

When performing this test I took about a handful of soil, a little smaller than the size of a ping pong ball, and added a few drops of water to the wad of soil until it was moist. Then, using my thumb and forefinger I squeezed it into a strand that was a couple of inches. Since I was able to at least form a short ribbon we ruled out the soil being mostly sand. However, since it was shorter we came to the conclusion that we most likely had silt or loam, because if it was clay the ribbon, theoretically, would have been able to be longer. Also the feeling of the soil helped us reach the conclusion of loam or silt because it felt a little sticky but not noticeably sticky so we thought it was mostly silt with maybe a little trace of clay.

Quantitative Test:

Before Shaking

For this test we placed 70 mL of our soil into a graduated cylinder and filled it with water to the 100mL mark. The soil was originally a light dull brown but the water made it darker. After shaking the apparatus and mixing the water and soil it formed a dark brown substance. After leaving it out overnight the water again rose up above the soil leaving only one distinct layer of soil. There was about 11 cm of a medium brown color that had spots of dark color throughout and the water had become lightly tinted brown. Based on this calculation that 100% of our soil was the same we would label it as silt. We also took into account our qualitative test though which further strengthened our belief that we had silt because of its ability to form a short ribbon. The small trace of clay that we believed we had due to the ability to form a ribbon caused us to think that we had about 10% clay and not the 0% that the quantitative would've suggested. Therefore, for the clay and sand percentage we accounted for a very low 0-10%, leaning more towards the 0% side for sand, and 10% side for clay. This left about 85-90% to silt which based on our one layer seen in the test would make sense. Based solely on the quantitative test we would have silt, however; taking the qualitative test into account we thought it was more realistic that our soil fell into the silt loam category. Looking at the triangle to the right you can see that they met up at right around where the silt and silt loam categories meet (indicated by black dot), suggesting it is somewhere within that range. This however somewhat contradicts our percolation test outcome because since water took about the same time to filter through our soil as it did in sand, and drained about the same amount of water it suggests that our soil is more similar to sand than clay. Looking at this test we would have expected a greater percentage of sand in our soil than what we saw in our quantitative test. It was difficult to determine which areas were more likely to hold what soils because a lot of it varied and it was difficult to find accurate descriptions of the different areas and how they were developed since most were not necessarily well known or important places. Even our soil, which was from Cuba Marsh was hard to find because it is likely to have many types of soil because it incorporates many different types of land, with some of it being marsh and prairie, along with others. 

after shaking

After leaving out overnight

Soil Moisture Test

Before putting our soil into the oven it was a dull brown color and our sample weighed 31.7 grams. After removing it form the oven it looked more crumbly and hard. It weighed 28.1 grams, meaning that about 3.6 grams of the original soil was water. With 3.6 grams of a total of 31.7 grams as water that would mean that about 11.35% of the soil was water. This goes with our texture results because based on our texture we figured it wasn't as moist as clay but it was not as dry as sandy soil. Since our moisture was a little less than average for soil it would confirm our findings of our previous tests that it is somewhere in between. Based on our soil and other groups' soil we felt there is a correlation because usually if the texture is more smooth and clay like it will also be more moist than a sand texture that is gritty and tends to be a little more dry. This proved true because we found that the groups that had clay had more water in their soil than we did. One of the groups that had clay had almost 5 times as much moisture as we had.

Collecting Our Soil

    We collected our soil from Cuba Marsh. The soil was difficult to get a lot of because once we reached 12 inches deep, we noticed it got more grainy, and it was harder to scoop up the particles. We mostly noticed roly polys and rocks in the soil which was covered by grass and leaves. The soil looked dry and was a light brown. The particle sizes were mostly smaller particles but there were also a lot of clumps. There was a walking path and a lot of trees in the area. The path could effect our results since it means that part of the area has clearly been altered by man. To try and
avoid this we picked a spot away from the path.

Before

Savio hard at work

After

Introduction

Components of soil

     Many people use the words soil and dirt interchangeably; but, fact is they are two different components of nature. Soil is in a sense living, containing microorganisms, organic matter, and insects. Contrary to this, dirt is basically dead soil that is left without the characteristics above that give soil the "living" definition. along with microorganisms and organic matter, soil has other defining qualities as well. Soil's other main components are water, air, and mineral matter. Soil is formed from rocks and minerals weathering; when rocks break down into smaller pieces and mix with organic matter, it very slowly creates the thin layer. as more accumulates and plants and animals decay, it adds to the soil, making it richer. The formation is impacted by parent material, living organisms, climate, time, and topography. When looking at soil texture we focus mostly on particle size, which effects the porosity. With large particles like sand, water falls through; whereas with clay, small particles, it holds in water. The color can also tell us about how rick a soil is. Generally, dark soil is richer than light soil, which can show leaching. pH matters as well because, although soil wants some H+ ions from plants, too much causes the soil to become acidic, which harms the soil and plants.
   

Illinois Drummer Soil

Illinois is dominated by the Dummer soil, characterized for its deep but poorly drained soil. The soil is usually thick, silty, and darker up top and gradually gets darker. The soil is generally good for farming. In Hawaii the main soil is Hilo, which is deep and either dark or sometimes reddish brown. Hawaii however has very diverse types of soil because of the difference in rainfall in different regions of the islands. The climate and soil in Hawaii allows for different farming of more tropical plants unlike the traditional farming of corn in the Midwest. In Georgia the main soil is tifton which is dark gray or brown, and sandy. Soil in Arizona is very deep and well drained. The southern half of Arizona is better for growing crops.

Georgia Tifton Soil

Arizona Soil

Hawaii Hilo Soil

     Farmers should be interested in soil analysis because it can tell them about the nutrients present in their soil and can give insight into which crops will grow best. Knowing what is in your soil can save a farmer time because they will not have to be guessing which nutrients are lacking. It also helps with nutrient runoff because you will not be wasting or adding too much nitrogen or phosphorus by guessing how much to add to crops. Economically it will make a farmer's field more efficient because they will be growing crop and fertilizing them correctly so they will be saving money and producing a better product.