For day 2 of our practice pits we judged 6 pits as pairs, individuals, and as a team. Two pits were on Missouri State's Darr Agricultural Center grounds and 4 others were on the Shealy property north of Springfield. The pits on the Darr Agricultural Center were both Mollisols with undescribed overburden, a break from the Alfisols and Ultisols that we had seen on the first day. At the Shealy property, we saw pits with residuum at depth and loess or colluvial caps. We had to get used to digging between all of the coarse fragments (up to 80% in some horizons) for the 2.5YR and 10R clay residual material. By the end of the day, everyone was proficient at scraping their knives along the surfaces of coarse fragments to get just enough soil to texture and color - a tedious but important task in this region.
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| Looking for horizons in a Paleudoll formed in loess (Heather Ryan) |
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Discussion regarding how to distinguish between the Peoria Loess and Loveland Loess in order to correctly judge discontinuities (Anna Hyytinen, Wyatt Behrends, Erik Schilling, Nic Jelinski, Heather Ryan, Andrew Krinke, Jeff Tanaka)
Working as a cohesive team at the Shealy Farm (An-Min Wu (L), Andrew Krinke, Wyatt Behrends, Anna Hyytinen, Heather Ryan, Erik Schilling) |
