The University of Minnesota has
arrived in Maryville, MO for the 2012 Region V Collegiate Soil Judging
Competition! After 7 hours of driving, we pulled into the Holiday Inn Express,
ate dinner, went grocery shopping at Walmart, and settled in for a week of
getting to know northwest Missouri soils. The illustrious Terry Cooper, our
fearless leader, went over the general soil types of the area, and already we
can tell this is not going to be easy….up to five different A layers in one
profile (Ap, A1, A2, A3, A4)?! Two buried soils?! Did I really just see a
2Btkgb2 in that soil description…!!! We expect to see quite a few Mollisols and
textures in the silt loam to silty clay loam range. There could even be some
old Paleosols deposited during the Kansan Glaciation over half a million years
ago.
For those of you not familiar with
soil judging, it is a competition where undergraduate students from different
universities compete at describing soil profiles (usually in a pit about 150cm deep where
we can see a wall of soil and its layers). We have to know things like soil
taxonomy, geographical features, land use classification, as well as be able to feel the soil in our hands to determine the texture
(the ratio of sand, silt and clay). We will practice for three days and then
compete on Thursday both individually and as a group. If we place in the final four of the regionals, we could get the opportunity to compete at the National Soil Judging Competition!
Sadly, we
are one member short (Brianna Mattson had trouble with the Twin Cities public
transportation this morning) bringing our team down to ten members. Our team
captains are Thomas Bolas and Melissa Collins Rutter, both returning soil
judgers, and joining us this year is: Andrew Haberman, Yasha Horstmann, Andrew
Krinke, Lewis Lachmansingh, Erik
Schilling, Stephanie Schumacher, Andrea Slotke, and Xinyi Tu.
