2025 Nationals: Practice Days 2 + 3

 Day 2

Over the past couple of days, we have been digging into soils inside glacial margins and outside of them, in both the local drift and crystalline-drift provinces, as well as on the edge of larger outwash plains. We saw our first Spodosols of this contest!

Assessing an Endoaqoud.

The Endoaquod in question, formed on the edge of an outwash plain. Shoutout to the pit monitors who pumped out this pit all day!

Orstein – cemented spodic materials! The dark color is cemented humus, and the other cementing material is illuvial sesquioxides.

We headed to the edge of an older till regime and saw more soils, this time Albaqualfs, with glossic horizons. Some colorful soils! And some soggy pits.

An Albaqualf…this one was underlain by residuum parent materials! Check out those redox concentrations.

Assistant Coach Nate augering for some sixth horizon soil materials for the judgers, down below the current water table.

Day 3

We headed inside the glacial margin, and in an exciting turn, got our hands on some silt loams in an ice-walled lake plain. Feels like home!

A Hapludalf formed in glaciolacustrine sediments.

We get excited about silt loam!

We also headed to the Central Wisconsin Environmental Station to see some soils formed on kames in a pine plantation. These had some steep slopes and lots of coarse fragments!

In the evening, we had a whole lot of fun at a polka dance and brat fry organized by UWSP students. We did the hokey pokey, pet lots of dogs, and enjoyed a very Wisconsin evening.

Tomorrow, we wrap up our practice pits and prepare for our contest days at the end of the week–and rep the Minnesota flannels. Go Gophs!

2025 Nationals in Stevens Point, Wisconsin: Practice Day 1

The Gophers are off to a great start at the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest hosted by University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point, in the land of sand and spodosols! We are excited to continue to dig into the glacial geology of the area and all the fascinating soils the contest hosts have selected.

For Day 1 of practice, we had a few sites on the edge of the western extent of the Green Bay glacial lobe. We saw soils formed on kames, outwash plains, and till plains.

A Dystrudept formed on a kame in a once-logged area. Umbric epipdeon!

Incredible stratification on an Endoaquept formed on an outwash plain.

The control face of the same soil. Check out that wavy boundary…cryoturbation from a time when this soil was experiencing permafrost conditions?

The Gophers on an outwash plain…some eolian sand parent materials on top here.

The proud Minnesota flag!

We ended the day with dinner and an area orientation talk by Bryant Scharenbroch of UWSP. We took lots of notes and asked many questions, as UMN is known for. A big thank you goes out to all of the donors who made our travel to this contest possible. We are grateful to the contest hosts for all their work and commitment. We are excited to dig deep! Go Gophs!

2025 NACTA Contest in Canyon, Texas: Off to a Great Start

This week, five soil judgers are in Canyon, Texas for the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) soil judging contest! We described four practice pits and spent the afternoon exploring Palo Duro State Park. 

Monday morning was spent in loess hills 15 minutes west of Palo Duro Canyon. The team observed the pedogenesis of calcium carbonate accumulation down a portion of a catena (and observed the rest on Tuesday). 

This profile was on the hillslope’s shoulder and besides having amazing colors (5YR 3/4 and 5YR 4/6s), we saw secondary calcium carbonate accumulation starting at 40cm.

We then went downslope to the backslope and found secondary carbonates starting at 22cm - closer to the surface due to a higher slope, which causes more runoff and less infiltration. These pits, and two others described on Tuesday, illustrate the effect of slope and water infiltration on depth to carbonates. In our part of Minnesota, we do not see carbonate accumulations like these, so we had a blast learning about these!

After lunch, we visited Palo Duro Canyon. This is the second largest canyon in the USA and has some fascinating geology. Our highlights were the “red beds” at the base of the canyon and gypsum bands. These Gophers look forward to learning more about the High Plains throughout the week. Stay tuned!

The 2025 NACTA Team in Palo Duro Canyon. Go Gophs!